Pharmacy COVID History Sought

And a 1920s Bath & Body Works

“bold, indeed, and reckless would be the druggist who should discard the colored show globe, and not one of you can name druggists who can tell why they have them except for the single reason that others do.”¹

Libraries & museums preserve the history of pharmacy.

The American Institute of the History of Pharmacy Archives are located at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Starting in 2021, the new journal, History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals (HoPP), will be the official publication of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy (AIHP). (From 1959-2020, the title of AIHP’s journal was Pharmacy in History.

Great titles under review include:

• Anthony Ryan Hatch, Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

• Robert A. Voeks, The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

• James Tharin Bradford, Poppies, Politics, and Power: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy (Cornell University Press, 2019).

The American Institute of the History of Pharmacy is documenting and preserving pharmacy stories and experiences during the COVID-19 global pandemic for the benefit of future historians and scholars. We seek to record the effects of this public health emergency on all types of pharmacy experiences. We invite you to share your pharmacy stories, photos, videos, artifacts, and other documentation of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.²

In this brief clip from the History of Pharmacy Museum at the University of Arizona the curator tells his tour that when he works with old drugs “he smells like a 1920s Bath & Body Works.”

1. Osburn, Catherine. (2017). “The Colorful (and Dangerous?) History of Show Globes.” Dittrick Medical History Center. Case Western University.

2. AIHP COVID-19 Pandemic Pharmacy Historical Documentation Project. The American Institute of the History of Pharmacy is documenting and preserving pharmacy stories and experiences during the COVID-19 global pandemic for the benefit of future historians and scholars. We seek to record the effects of this public health emergency on all types of pharmacy experiences, including, but not limited to: community pharmacists, hospital pharmacists, military pharmacists, pharmacy educators, pharmacy students, pharmacy customers/consumers, pharmacy regulators, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. We invite you to share your pharmacy stories, photos, videos, artifacts, and other documentation of the COVID-19 coronavirus.