Medicines in the American Revolutionary Period

Medicines in the American Revolutionary Period

Author: Michael Shannon
Publisher: American Institute of the History of Pharmacy
Year Published: 1981, 2010
Slides: 45
AIHP#: ST40
Price: $20.00 ($12.00 for members)

Summary: The story of pharmacy and drugs in colonial and revolutionary America.

Abstract: From the time of the first permanent English colony at Jamestown until the end of the Revolutionary War, Americans who needed drugs obtained them from a variety of men engaged to some extent in medical practice, or “physic” as it was then called. When we try to understand the pharmaceutical significance of the Revolutionary War, the following events stand out: Eight years of successful pharmaceutical activity, separate from medicine but equally recognized and given the same official status. 2. The first known American manufacture of pharmaceutical products on a large scale, initiated by a pharmacist in order to meet national needs. 3. The first practical attempt at a uniform and obligatory formulary as a basis for satisfactory and reliable pharmaceutical work (in this case, military pharmacy). 4. The influence of encounters between American pharmacists and their European colleagues, who were more advanced professionally. By the time of victory, the importance of professionalized pharmacy for the public welfare had been proved by the tests to which it had been put by the American Revolutionary War.