Columbus and Coca-Cola (excerpted)

From: americancivilwarstory.com

John Stith Pemberton was injured during the Battle of Columbus. He received a saber slash across his chest during the struggle for the 14th Street bridge. Like many other wounded veterans, he became addicted to the morphine that was used for a pain-killer.

Pemberton was a pharmacist and decided to work on a medicine that would help relieve his addiction. Eventually he came up with a formula which was basically a wine infused with coca (cocaine), kola nut (caffeine), and damiana (purported aphrodisiac). This was essentially an imitation of a very successful French medicinal wine called Vin Mariani, but Vin Mariani used only coca not Pemberton's other two ingredients. He called his new medicine, "Pemberton's French Wine Coca," and began selling in several drugstores in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1886 he ran into a problem. Temperance legislation was enacted in Atlanta and Fulton County. This forced him to try to come up with a new, non-alcoholic formula for his drink.

With the help of a druggist named Willis Venable, he came up with a recipe to blend his base syrup with carbonated water. This way it could be sold as a fountain drink. A man named Frank Mason Robinson came up with a catchy new name for the drink, and on May 8, 1886, the first Coca-Cola was sold at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.

So, if the Battle of Columbus hadn't happened, John Pemberton would not have been injured. If he had not been injured, he would not have gotten addicted to morphine. Without an addiction he would not have searched for a cure, and if he had not been searching for a cure, we would never have gotten Coke!

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The Story of Boericke & Tafel: Homeopathic Pharmacists

By Boericke & Tafel, Presented by Sylvain Cazalet

In 1835, Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. We lit our homes with whale oil lamps traveled from city to city by stage coach, and cooked our meals in Open fire places Life expectancy was approximately 40 years for women and 38 years for men. In 1835, Constantine Hering, the Father of American Homeopathy, was in practice in Philadelphia and Hans Burch Gram in New York.

Dr. Hering was one of the founders of America's first homeopathic medical college where lessons were taught in German. That same year, William Radde, Senior in Philadelphia and Junior in NY were managers of stores which later became a part of Boericke & Tafel. Their advertisement in Herring’s The Domestic Physician offered readers: "All works on Homeopathy, as well as pocket cases of homeopathic medicines, prepared by approved hands and very neatly arranged." In 1848, Hering established the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, which later became the Hahnemann Medical College, the nation's leading homeopathic medical school.

In 1849, a cholera epidemic swept the nation. Because of the superior results achieved by homeopathic physicians, many orthodox doctors took up the practice of homeopathy. At the same time, many of the intelligentsia were attracted to homeopathy because of its scientific basis in experimental pharmacology. In 1853, Dr. Hering persuaded Francis E. Boericke and Adolph J. Tafel to enter into the manufacture and sale of homeopathic medicines. Ten years later, Dr Boericke acquired the Radde pharmacies in Philadelphia and N. Y.

By this time there were over 2400 homeopathic physicians in the United States with over 700 in New York and over 325 in Pennsylvania. Keeping pace with the continuing growth in the practice of homeopathy, Boericke & Tafel established pharmacies in New Orleans, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Chicago and Cincinnati in addition to the two in New York City and Philadelphia.

As pharmacists, Boericke & Tafel has been privileged to serve the founders and pioneers of homeopathy, including Christian Hering and James Tyler Kent. In a letter dated July 30, 1903 recommending B &T's Skinner potencies to another physician, Kent wrote: "I am the one who urged the firm of Boericke & Tafel to put in a Skinner potentizer…I have a full set of Skinner potencies- they work well - I know how they are made."

Boericke & Tafel has an equally distinguished record as publishers. They were responsible for issuing over a hundred titles, approximately eighty-five percent of all homeopathic books published in the United States, including the American Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia, the sixth edition of Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine (translated by William Boericke), and Boericke's Materia Medica with Repertory, which is today the standard U.S. materia medica and an integral part of most homeopathic computer repertorization programs.

Starting in 1915, a concerted effort on the part of the American Medical Association resulted in a steady decline in the number of homeopathic medical schools, homeopathic physicians, and homeopathic pharmacies. During this bleak homeopathy almost ceased to exist in the United States. Fortunately, the worldwide reputation that Boericke & Tafel medicines had earned for purity, quality, and efficacy generated sufficient export business to enable the firm to survive in spite of greatly diminished U.S. sales.

In 1980's and 1990's, the growing interest in the environment, natural products, and the individual's assuming responsibility for his or her own health initiated a renaissance in homeopathy. The number of practitioners increased, study groups were formed, naturopathic medical colleges developed courses in homeopathy, homeopathic medicines became available nationwide in health food stores and a small number of pharmacies, the Food and Drug Administration issued a Compliance Policy Guide regulating the manufacture and marketing of homeopathic medicines, and several European homeopathic pharmaceutical firms entered the U.S. market.

In 1987, Boericke & Tafel became a part of Hom Int (Homeopathy International), a federation of homeopathic firms doing business throughout the world, sponsoring basic and clinical research and professional and lay education and development programs. With its new state-of-art headquarters and the nation's most advanced full-line homeopathic production facilities, Boericke & Tafel, America's oldest pharmaceutical firm, has combined the best of both worlds.

From: homeoint.org

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Civil War Pharmacy: A History of Drugs, Drug Supply and Provision, and Therapeutics for the Union and Confederacy (review)

Reviewed by Gregory J. Higby

Michael A. Flannery. Civil War Pharmacy: A History of Drugs, Drug Supply and Provision, and Therapeutics for the Union and Confederacy. New York: Pharmaceutical Products Press (Haworth Press), 2004. xiii + 358 pp. Ill. $59.95 (cloth, 0-7890-1501-3); $34.95 (paperbound, 0-7890-1502-1).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
As is often the case today, a work's subtitle tells the full story of its contents. While Michael Flannery gives attention to the traditional aspects of pharmacy—the making of medicines—he focuses on the drugs themselves and their use. Forty years ago, when George Winston Smith wrote Medicines for the Union Army, history of pharmacy, like the discipline it studied, was limited to the production and distribution of medicines. Today the field of pharmacy includes pharmacology, therapeutics, and drug utilization, an expansion reflected in Civil War Pharmacy. Flannery has written a valuable book for both buffs and historians. For the lover of Civil War lore, the text yields useful details and captivating stories. For the professional, the author provides a solid narrative, cogent interpretation, and good documentation. Not one to shy away from controversy, Flannery tackles a few "old chestnuts," including the court martial of Surgeon General Hammond and the debatable efficacy of Civil War therapeutics.

The narrative of Civil War Pharmacy is divided into three parts, followed by a set of exceptionally useful appendices that include the Union and Confederate standard supply tables for medicines, a long excerpt from The Hospital Steward's Manual, and the text of Hammond's famous Circular No. 6. In part 1, Flannery "sets the stage" with three chapters—one largely historiographic, another on the "State of Pharmacy in America, 1861," and a third examining women and Civil War pharmacy. Readers knowledgeable about Civil War medicine should resist the temptation to skip the first chapter, because mixed in with the expected references to Doctors in Blue and laudable pus is a solid argument for the importance of medicines in the conflict: because of the high rate of treated diseases—malaria, respiratory ailments, and digestive disorders—"the medical context for the Civil War . . . was not one principally of saws and sutures but of mortar and pestle" (p. 23).
In part 2, Flannery concentrates on pharmacy in the Union with chapters on purveyors, manufacturing, and therapeutics. This is the strongest section of the book. An entire chapter is devoted to calomel and quinine, two favorites of allopathic physicians of both armies. While the calomel story, wrapped up with the downfall of William Hammond, might be more sensational, Flannery's discussion of quinine as drug and commodity is enlightening. After this, part 3 on the Confederacy is a bit of a disappointment. Flannery bears little blame for this: Many of the records of the South were lost. More importantly, there was much less pharmacy in the South—almost no significant medicine manufacturing existed there before the war, and the Union's naval blockade hampered the importation of drugs. (The vast majority of botanical drugs came from abroad.) Instead, Flannery's story shifts from laboratories and tons of output in the North to the South's blockade runners and the valiant attempt of Southerners to find substitutes for foreign drugs. [End Page 774]

Flannery concludes his book with a short epilogue arguing persuasively that the Civil War had sweeping influences on the development of the American pharmaceutical trade in the late 1800s. Forced by an incredible increase in demand, companies like Squibb, Wyeth, and Sharp and Dohme industrialized their operations—ending the era when the drug business was a cottage industry.
Because this is a work on the Civil War, its nearly inevitable popularity should elicit a second edition. If so, I encourage the author to consider the following suggestions: First, insist on better production values from your publisher: the uninteresting typography and murky photographic reproduction detract from the work; also, add a few maps showing laboratory locations and other sites of interest. Second, avoid "pharmaceutical care," a loaded term that carries a specific meaning for today's pharmacists that is not equivalent to "medical care." Third, carefully go over the quinine/cinchona sections: in some places, cinchona is called a derivative of quinine...

From: Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume 80, Number 4, Winter 2006
pp. 774-775 | 10.1353/bhm.2006.0129

From: muse.jhu.edu

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The Founder of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

From: nndb.com

John Wyeth
Born: 1841
Birthplace: Harrisburg, PA
Died: 30-Mar-1907
Location of death: Philadelphia, PA
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Business
Party Affiliation: Democratic

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Founder of Wyeth

John Wyeth, founder of the present-day pharmaceutical giant, was the son of a druggist, and studied at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (now the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia). At graduation he took employment at Henry C. Blair's apothecary store in Philadelphia, and four years later he was made a partner in the shop. In 1860 he quit Blair's shop and, with his brother Frank Wyeth, opened John Wyeth & Brother, Chemists, at 1410 Walnut Street in Philadelphia. The shop's key innovation was to mix medicinal compounds in advance, in large batches, allowing the Wyeth Brothers to sell commonly-prescribed drugs at a lower price than competitors. Wyeth's main success, however, came from a government contract during the American Civil War, to deliver medicines and beef extract to the Union Army.

In 1872, an employee of Wyeth's, Henry Bower, invented a machine for making tablets from medicinal powders, allowing mass production of pills with pre-measured dosages. After fire destroyed the shop in 1889, the brothers left the retail business and opened a larger manufacturing facility at the corner of 11th & Washington. The company's products included a wide array of compressed pills, effervescing salts, elixirs, lozenges, suppositories, and bottled cannabis powder (to be taken with hot brandy, according to its label). Wyeth was also a key player in a syndicate which purchased and published the Philadelphia Record newspaper. His son Stuart took over the drug business at John Wyeth's death in 1907, and at the younger Wyeth's death in 1929, the company was bequeathed to his alma mater, Harvard University. Harvard sold the company to American Home Products in 1932, and AHP rebranded itself Wyeth in 2002.

Father: John Wyeth (chemist/newspaper worker, b. 1798, d. 1876)
Mother: Elmira Jane Canfield Wyeth (b. 1814, d. 1878)
Brother: Frank Wyeth (pharmacist)
Wife: Sarah Wyeth (b. 1844)
Son: Stuart Wyeth (Wyeth executive, b. 1862, d. 1929)

University: University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (1854)

Wyeth Founder and President (1860-1907)
The Philadelphia Record Owner

Author of books: "An Epitome of Therapeutics" (1906)

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Wright’s Indian Vegetable Pills

Posted by Darin Hayton

Another patent medicine company was Wright’s Indian Vegetable Pills. Like most companies, Wright’s made various patent medicines that were reportedly effective in treating nearly every ailment known. Wright’s employed yet another set of visual cue to market their medicines, uneasily combining Greek, Roman, and American Indian iconography. Minerva, the Roman goddess of medicine, and Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health and healing, flank a stereo-typical American Indian scene.

Numerous companies invoked American Indians, though usually in a more coherently New World theme. Images, texts, and even the names of the medicines reinforced this motif. Clearly, Wright’s was picking up on the noble savage mythologies that granted the American Indians a particularly close relationship with nature, a body of herbal remedies and natural cures. Wright’s, however, tried to graft the American Indian traditions onto the older Greek and Roman roots.

As with most almanacs, the druggist’s name and address was stamped on the back. In this case, Frank T. Landis, in Womelsdorf, PA, must have had quite a selection of patent medicines that provided a reasonable income. Two decade earlier he had been selling G. G. Green’s August Flower.

Wright’s boldly listed the ailments cured by their vegetable pills. The laundry list of complaints included such standards as colds and coughs, fever and ague, and yellow fever. Alongside these stood more creative and ambitious claims: blotches on the skin, boils, dropsy, freckles, flatulency, gravel, neuralgia, pimples, and tumors.

This list suggests that people were suffering from a wide range of illnesses, or at least feared they were. It is somewhat surprising that a single medicine could claim to be effective against such a broad range of symptoms that must have been associated with these different ailments.

In addition to the medical ailments treated by Wright’s, apparently those little miracle pills could treat psychological symptoms too, such as calming a person’s nerves.

Here young Tommy Simkins is told to use Wright’s to soothe his beloved’s nerves when he proposes:
"Tommy Simkins. I proposed to cousin Lillie on the stoop last night and she shook so hard with emotion she couldn’t answer.
Mrs. Simkins. Umph! She’s got chills and fevers. Get her a box of Wright’s Indian Vegetable Pills and try again."

There are at least two things disturbing about that exchange: drugging a woman to get her to say yes to a proposal and “cousin”.

Like all almanacs, Wright’s included the obligatory monthly calendar and basic astrological information, which could be correlated with the zodiacal man that graced the inside front cover. In this case, the owner (Mr. Fröhlich who wrote his name across the cover) annotated at least one month, indicating the weather that occurred on certain days.

Apparently, it rained on the opening days of April. Unfortunately, Mr. Fröhlich didn’t record any other observations.

These almanacs provide interesting glimpses into both the distribution of patent medicines—with some luck we could begin to piece together Frank T. Landis’s business—as well as every-day life in the 19th century. Quite a number of these almanacs are annotated, often with banal, quotidian notes. But that is precisely what makes them interesting. That, and the quirky illustrations and absurd medical advice.

From: pachs.net

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Medicine Men

by Jim Schmidt
From the December 2000 issue of "The Civil War News"

Rising drug costs. Government-run health care. Competition from alternative therapies. We may think these challenges are unique to modern medicine and election year politics. In fact, the Union and Confederate medical supply systems faced identical challenges during the Civil War.

Pharmacists participated in nearly every aspect of military drug supply during the war, and their important role is described in an excellent article, “Pharmacy in the American Civil War,” by Guy R. Hasegawa, Pharm. D., in the American Journal of Health-Systems Pharmacy (Vol. 57; March 1, 2000; pp. 475-489).

The article begins with a description of civilian pharmacy in the mid-1800’s. Most crude drugs were imported and then sold to wholesalers or large drug companies, mainly in the northern states. Finished medicines were then distributed to retail pharmacists and physicians for sale to the public. The industry faced several challenges during this period, including volatile prices due to speculators, drug adulteration, and the lack of formal pharmacy education. Mention is made in the article of several men who left careers as druggists to become soldiers, including Indiana artillery Captain Eli Lilly and Confederate Major General Pat Cleburne.

The article then focuses on the four major stages of drug supply during the war: acquisition of materials, inspection and preparation of finished medicines, distribution to depots and hospitals, and dispensing to patients. Dr. Hasegawa notes that pharmacists were involved at every step.
Before the Civil War, the U.S. Army bought medicines on the open market and then distributed them through a large depot in New York and a few smaller ones. During the war, the Union expanded its network to as many as 30 depots, with major centers in New York and Philadelphia. The army relied heavily on a handful of large domestic drug companies for stable inventories and prices. In the field, medical purveyors requisitioned medicines and distributed them to units.

Drug acquisition in the Confederacy was hampered by the Union blockade, and medicines in possession of Southern drugstores were quickly used up. Other means, including blockade running, smuggling through enemy lines, capture of Union supplies, and use of native plants and remedies, saw the Confederacy through the war.

Both the Union and Confederacy established laboratories to inspect raw drug materials and to prepare finished medicines. The article includes descriptions of the major Union labs in Philadelphia, Long Island, and Brooklyn (Navy), and the minor one in St. Louis. The Confederacy established a naval lab in Richmond, and no less than eight Army labs spread among Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas. Both sides benefited from the expertise of talented and innovative chemists to ensure quality and efficiency.

The article includes excellent descriptions and illustrations of the equipment used to carry drugs in the field. Surgeons and their assistants often carried medicines in saddlebags, haversacks, and in their pockets. On the march, the drugs were transported in large boxes (panniers) stowed in ambulances. The innovative Autenrieth wagon was specially designed with shelves and work counters to operate as a “pharmacy on wheels.”

Dr. Hasegawa concludes the article with a description of the challenges and responsibilities faced by the hospital stewards. The stewards were in charge of purchasing and stores, sometimes assisted in minor surgery, and were responsible for the general cleanliness and discipline of the hospital.

As a scientist in the pharmaceutical industry myself, a most interesting part of the article for me was the mention of the contributions of several companies who are recognizable even today, including Squibb, Pfizer, and Wyeth; and of notable chemists such as John M. Maisch and Charles T. Mohr.

The article is superbly illustrated and meticulously researched. Nearly twenty illustrations include portraits of several Union and Confederate medical notables, period photographs of laboratories and stewards, and etchings of period medical knapsacks and panniers. More than 150 footnotes drawing on dozens of sources provide excellent leads for further study by interested readers. Two appendices feature Union and Confederate standard medical supply tables.

“I’ve had an interest in the Civil War and military history since my boyhood, but it wasn’t until I moved to Maryland twelve years ago that the interest became more intense,” Dr. Hasegawa told me. Inspired by the battlefields and other historic sites in the area, Guy volunteered his services to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) in Frederick, MD. Relying on his expertise in pharmacy, they asked him to write short summaries about a number of herbal medicines used during the war, resulting in some exhibit panels at the museum.

“Doing the research on these remedies brought me into contact with the literature of the day and with people sharing my interest in pharmacy and Civil War history,” he told me. He enjoyed the research and after gathering sufficient material he wrote the article for the Journal. He has also presented his research at roundtables, the NMCWM’s annual conferences, and the annual national conventions of the Society of Civil War Surgeons (SOCWS).

A follow-up to Dr. Hasegawa’s article, “The other pharmacists in the American Civil War,” was published in the July 1, 2000, issue of the Journal. In a letter to the editor, Captain Steven R. Moore of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) and John Parascandola, a historian with the National Library of Medicine, provided a brief history of the Marine Hospital Service (MHS), the forerunner of the USPHS.

Begun in 1798, the mandate of the Marine Hospital Service was to care for merchant seamen. The hospitals always employed pharmacists, who aside from the physicians, were the only professionally trained personnel on duty. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the MHS operated 27 hospitals in major seaports across the United States. During the war, the MHS hospitals also cared for wounded soldiers and sailors, and in the South (Charleston, Natchez, etc.) the hospitals were controlled by whichever side held them. By the end of the war, only a few of the hospitals remained operational. Eventually the mission of the MHS was enlarged and it was transformed into the USPHS. Suggestions for further reading are included.

There’s even more good news for those interested in the pharmaceutical aspects of the Civil War! Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY) is reprinting George W. Smith’s Medicines for the Union Army: The United States Army Laboratories During the Civil War, originally published in 1962 by the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy (AIHP).

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Dean of The College of Pharmacy of the University of Findlay Speaks About Civil War Medicine

September 16, 2013
Written by Sarah Foltz

In August, Don Stansloski, dean of the College of Pharmacy, visited Lakeside Chatauqua, a historic Ohio community and resort, to share his knowledge of the Civil War and the impact it had on medicine in the United States.

In a uniform of a pharmacist in the Union Army, he shared interesting before-and-after facts of the war. “Essentially, I talked to them about what the north and south were like before the civil war,” Stansloski said.

Stansloski explained many aspects of the Civil War, including the industrial environment in the north where people depended on machinery, while the south depended on slavery for agriculture. In terms of health care and medicine, the north and south were very similar.

“Prescriptions were one-of, meaning that each medicine was made from scratch for each patient. One did not buy a bottle of aspirin for example. Rather the pharmacist would take a chemical and make it into a dosage form like a capsule,” said Stansloski. “The war changed everything because suddenly there were six million people in the armies that had to be cared for all at once. You could no-longer provide prescriptions one-of anymore then you could provide weapons one-of.”

During the Civil War, the general manufacturing process greatly expanded in the United States. Stansloski explains that prior to the war, there were 19,000 manufacturing plants in the south while 22,000 plants were in New York alone.

“Before the war, there were 84 places making drugs, and after the war there were 300,” said Stansloski. “Nursing did not exist in the US before the war, but it did after.”

Stansloski also shared how the world learned about infection. Even those with the best medical care possible still suffered from illness because they did not know what infection was.

Before the war, people were routinely poisoned with mercury because it was thought to follow the best medical ideas of the time.

“There was a widespread feeling that most of the bad things that happened to us were a result of our own immoral behavior or failure to have enough willpower,” said Stansloski. “People didn’t know there were infections before the war and afterwards everyone did.”

During the war, both sides used the same medical books and some of the drugs used at that time are still used today. Many drug companies were established after the war as well.

“It was a very fascinating time. 600,000 people died and about half of them died from disease,” said Stansloski.

Stansloski has shared his knowledge of Civil War medicine with several other groups and continues to enlighten others. “I do this because I’m interested and I’m able to tell the stories.”

IMAGE: Dr. Stansloski in a uniform of a Civil War pharmacist

FROM: newsroom.findlay.edu

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Civil War Pharmacy: A History of Drugs, Drug Supply and Provision, and Therapeutics for the Union and Confederacy by Michael Flannery

Review by Gregory Higby

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
As is often the case today, a work's subtitle tells the full story of its contents. While Michael Flannery gives attention to the traditional aspects of pharmacy—the making of medicines—he focuses on the drugs themselves and their use. Forty years ago, when George Winston Smith wrote Medicines for the Union Army, history of pharmacy, like the discipline it studied, was limited to the production and distribution of medicines. Today the field of pharmacy includes pharmacology, therapeutics, and drug utilization, an expansion reflected in Civil War Pharmacy. Flannery has written a valuable book for both buffs and historians. For the lover of Civil War lore, the text yields useful details and captivating stories. For the professional, the author provides a solid narrative, cogent interpretation, and good documentation. Not one to shy away from controversy, Flannery tackles a few "old chestnuts," including the court martial of Surgeon General Hammond and the debatable efficacy of Civil War therapeutics.

The narrative of Civil War Pharmacy is divided into three parts, followed by a set of exceptionally useful appendices that include the Union and Confederate standard supply tables for medicines, a long excerpt from The Hospital Steward's Manual, and the text of Hammond's famous Circular No. 6. In part 1, Flannery "sets the stage" with three chapters—one largely historiographic, another on the "State of Pharmacy in America, 1861," and a third examining women and Civil War pharmacy. Readers knowledgeable about Civil War medicine should resist the temptation to skip the first chapter, because mixed in with the expected references to Doctors in Blue and laudable pus is a solid argument for the importance of medicines in the conflict: because of the high rate of treated diseases—malaria, respiratory ailments, and digestive disorders—"the medical context for the Civil War . . . was not one principally of saws and sutures but of mortar and pestle" (p. 23).

In part 2, Flannery concentrates on pharmacy in the Union with chapters on purveyors, manufacturing, and therapeutics. This is the strongest section of the book. An entire chapter is devoted to calomel and quinine, two favorites of allopathic physicians of both armies. While the calomel story, wrapped up with the downfall of William Hammond, might be more sensational, Flannery's discussion of quinine as drug and commodity is enlightening. After this, part 3 on the Confederacy is a bit of a disappointment. Flannery bears little blame for this: Many of the records of the South were lost. More importantly, there was much less pharmacy in the South—almost no significant medicine manufacturing existed there before the war, and the Union's naval blockade hampered the importation of drugs. (The vast majority of botanical drugs came from abroad.) Instead, Flannery's story shifts from laboratories and tons of output in the North to the South's blockade runners and the valiant attempt of Southerners to find substitutes for foreign drugs.

Flannery concludes his book with a short epilogue arguing persuasively that the Civil War had sweeping influences on the development of the American pharmaceutical trade in the late 1800s. Forced by an incredible increase in demand, companies like Squibb, Wyeth, and Sharp and Dohme industrialized their operations—ending the era when the drug business was a cottage industry.

Because this is a work on the Civil War, its nearly inevitable popularity should elicit a second edition. If so, I encourage the author to consider the following suggestions: First, insist on better production values from your publisher: the uninteresting typography and murky photographic reproduction detract from the work; also, add a few maps showing laboratory locations and other sites of interest. Second, avoid "pharmaceutical care," a loaded term that carries a specific meaning for today's pharmacists that is not equivalent to "medical care." Third, carefully go over the quinine/cinchona sections: in some places, cinchona is called a derivative of quinine (pp. 99 and 131), while the opposite is true.

Until the second edition arrives, those interested in the American Civil War and nineteenth-century pharmacy will be well served by Flannery's first version.

From: Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume 80, Number 4, Winter 2006
pp. 774-775 | 10.1353/bhm.2006.0129

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Pharmacy in the American Civil War

By G.R. Hasegawa
From: American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy

Abstract
The role of pharmacists and the process of military drug supply in the American Civil War are described. Most raw drugs used in the United States in the mid-1800s were imported. During the Civil War, imports into the North continued, but the Union blockade forced the Confederacy to obtain medicines through means such as smuggling, capture of enemy supplies, and processing of indigenous medicinal plants.

Medical supplies for Civil War troops were typically purchased by military physicians called medical purveyors and sometimes by pharmacists serving as acting medical purveyors. In the latter half of the war, U.S. Army medical laboratories, in which many pharmacists were employed, inspected purchases, repackaged supplies bought in bulk, and manufactured medicines from raw materials.

The Confederacy also had medical laboratories, which were primarily responsible for manufacturing medicines from indigenous plant material but also inspected drugs that had been smuggled into the South. At a few large Union medical depots, pharmacists called medical storekeepers assumed many of the responsibilities of medical purveyors by receiving, storing, issuing, and accounting for supplies.

Noncommissioned officers called hospital stewards assumed diverse duties that included dispensing drugs prescribed by military physicians. Although many hospital stewards were pharmacists or physicians, others had no previous pharmaceutical experience. Civilian pharmacists were employed in the medical laboratories and in military general hospitals. Pharmacists participated in nearly every aspect of military drug supply during the Civil War.

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African American Medical Pioneer Dr. James McCune Smith (1813-1865)

From: pbs.org

James McCune Smith was the first African American to earn a medical degree and practice medicine in the United States. He was also the first to own and operate a pharmacy, in New York City. Smith was born on April 18, 1813 in New York City to parents who were former slaves. New York's Emancipation Act freed his father and his mother worked her way out of bondage. Smith began his education at the African Free School in New York City, but soon found he could go no further in U.S. education due to racial discrimination.

So Smith crossed the Atlantic and studied instead at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, where racial prejudice was less oppressive. There, he received a bachelor's degree in 1835, a master's degree in 1836, and his medical degree in 1837.

When he returned to the United States, Smith received a hero's welcome from New York's black community. He told the gathering, "I have striven to obtain education, at every sacrifice and every hazard, and to apply such education to the good of our common country." Soon after that, he gave a speech at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, where he described abolitionist activities in Europe.

He began a medical practice in New York and opened a pharmacy on West Broadway. It is said to be the first African American owned and operated pharmacy in the United States.

Dr. Smith practiced medicine for 25 years, primarily at the Free Negro Orphan Asylum. He frequently gave speeches against slavery, and wrote essays for antislavery publications, including the Emancipator and the Liberator. Smith used science and his knowledge of medicine to refute false claims of slavery advocates. In one essay, he marshaled statistics against a minister's claim that slaves in the South were more content than free blacks in the North. In another, he applied his medical knowledge to counter assertions about black health and insanity.

Smith wrote an introduction for Fredrick Douglass' second autobiographical volume, My Bondage and My Freedom. There, he wrote that Douglass' life story "shows that the worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down energy, truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right."

In 1863, Smith was appointed professor of anthropology at Wilberforce University, in Ohio. He died two years later in New York, survived by his wife and five children.

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