A brief look at American pharmaceutical education before 1900

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Fall 1999 by Higby, Gregory J

Introduction

A Brief Look at American Pharmaceutical Education Before 19001

In 1896, Charles R Chandler of the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York estimated that only one in eight pharmacists had received any formal technical education. 2 A far smaller number actually graduated from pharmacy school. A century later, universal adoption of the Pharm.D. curriculum is a near reality, a tribute to the hard work and leadership provided by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. This chapter describes the chaotic state of American pharmaceutical education before 1900 and provides a prologue to the Association's challenges and triumphs, setting the scene and laying out an assortment of reasons why the struggle has been so long and difficult.

PHARMACY IN COLONIAL AMERICA

As Glenn Sonnedecker has pointed out, the American profession of pharmacy was not simply transferred here from Europe. Instead, it developed out of bits and pieces of British and Continental traditions influenced greatly by the "exigencies of conquest and settlement."3 Because of this development, conflicting viewpoints arose periodically about the direction of pharmacy with many of the debates concerning education.

In colonial America, there were few apothecary shops, which like other specialized businesses, required significant concentrations of population to flourish. A few shops did exist in larger towns and cities beginning in the 1600s in places like Boston and Williamsburg. They functioned much like the apothecary shops in England, where apothecaries practiced a mixture of medicine and pharmacy American apothecaries sold medicines and sundries to the general public and acted as wholesalers and manufacturers of drugs to physicians and landowners.

APPRENTICESHIP AND INDENTURE

Apothecaries learned their trade by apprenticeship, more often than not working with physicians. It is difficult to estimate what percentage of pharmacy apprentices actually signed indentures, i.e., apprenticeship contracts. There is little doubt that only a small minority did so. Sonnedecker observed that the practice of indenture remained longer in medicine and pharmacy than in other skilled occupations.4

Most indentures called for the apprentice to work for seven years of service in exchange for learning at the feet of a master. Such contracts usually extended from age 14 to 21. An excellent example of a surviving indenture is that of Thomas Boulter, which was in effect from 1766-71. The following extract provides a flavor of such documents. Handwritten sections added to a standard printed indenture form are in italics:

Thomas Boulter, Son of Hannah Boulter of the City of Philadelphia ... has put himself... apprentice ... to learn the Art, Trade, and Mystery of an Apothecary, and (after the Manner of an Apprentice) to serve... a Term of Five Years and a half... The said apprentice, his Master faithfully serve, his Secrets keep, his lawful Commands every where readily obey. He shall do no Damage to his said Master, nor see it done by others, without letting or giving Notice to his said Master; he shall not waste his said Master's Goods, nor lend them unlawfully to any He shall not commit Fornication, nor contract Matrimony, within the said Term. At Cards, Dice or any other unlawful Games, he shall not play, whereby his said Master may have Damage. With his own Goods, nor the Goods of others, without License of his said Master he shall neither buy nor sell. He shall not absent himself Day or Night from his said Master's Service, without his Leave: Nor haunt Ale-houses, Taverns, or Play-houses, but in all Things behave himself as a faithful Apprentice, ought to do, during the said term.

The master's part of the contract was described as well:

He shall use the utmost of his Endeavour to teach and instruct, or cause to be taught and instructed, the said Apprentice, in the Trade or Mystery of an Apothecary and procure and provide him sufficient Meat[,] Drink, Apparel, Washing, Lodgings fitting for an Apprentice, during the said Term of Five years and six months and shall likewise teach him or cause him to be taught to read write and cypher and shall also give him at the Expiration of S[aid] Term one new Suit of Apparel besides his common apparel.5

During apprenticeship the master was expected to teach basic reading and arithmetic skills in addition to the "mysteries" of the trade. The absence of a system of public schooling, plus the lack of private schools for poorer children, made remedial training by the master almost always a necessity.

Although the formal English-style apprenticeship system collapsed after the Revolutionary War for most occupations, it remained a dominant force in pharmacy for the next one hundred years. This occurred largely because there was no alternative anywhere for 40 years, and few thereafter. Although the first American medical school was founded in 1765, the first pharmacy school was not established until 1821. Even then, substantial and widespread opportunities for pharmaceutical education across the young United States were not realized until well after the Civil War.