The position of the pharmacist in the structure of health care in the United States evolved during the middle half of the 19th century, roughly from the founding of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1821 to the passage of meaningful pharmaceutical legislation in the 1870s. Higby examines the professional life of William Procter, Jr., generally regarded as the “Father of American Pharmacy,” and follows the development of American pharmacy through four decades of Procter’s professional commitment to the field.
The position of the pharmacist in the structure of health care in the United States evolved during the middle half of the 19th century, roughly from the founding of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1821 to the passage of meaningful pharmaceutical legislation in the 1870s. Higby examines the professional life of William Procter, Jr., generally regarded as the “Father of American Pharmacy,” and follows the development of American pharmacy through four decades of Procter’s professional commitment to the field.
In Service to American Pharmacy: The Professional Life of William Procter Jr.
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Overview
The position of the pharmacist in the structure of health care in the United States evolved during the middle half of the 19th century, roughly from the founding of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1821 to the passage of meaningful pharmaceutical legislation in the 1870s. Higby examines the professional life of William Procter, Jr., generally regarded as the “Father of American Pharmacy,” and follows the development of American pharmacy through four decades of Procter’s professional commitment to the field.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817389680 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2015 |
| Series: | History of American Science and Technology |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Gregory J. Higby is Director of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, Madison, Wisconsin.
Read an Excerpt
In Service to American Pharmacy
The Professional Life of William Procter Jr.
By Gregory J. Higby
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1992 the University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8968-0
CHAPTER 1
A Glimpse at Procter's Character
When William Procter, Jr., died in February 1874, an era in American pharmacy came to a close. To the generation of pharmacists that established pharmacy's role in society, Procter had served as a model practitioner; after his death, he became a symbol for the next generation. He exemplified what the individual pharmacist could accomplish as a practitioner, teacher, author, and scientist. As an editor and organizer, Procter had helped to forge a national character for a young and aspiring profession. Unfortunately, few personal items survived Procter aside from a handful of letters. In order to learn about the private side of this man, this chapter relies on the voluminous published record of editorials, reports, and articles, as well as on the recollections of friends, colleagues, and rivals. Although these sources reveal only a veiled glimpse at the private man, they allow us to speculate as to the sources of his lifelong pursuit of the progress of American pharmacy.
The story of Procter and his contribution to American pharmacy began in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 3, 1817. William was the ninth child of Isaac and Rebecca Procter, proprietors of a successful hardware store. (The junior was added to distinguish him from his uncle William.) Both active members of the Society of Friends, the Procters planned to raise young William in their faith and provide for a liberal education. When Isaac died from yellow fever in 1820, the Procters fell on hard times that all but eliminated any chance of William attending college. With the hardware business divided up through litigation, Rebecca relied on help from relatives and the Quaker community to raise her family. Facing adversity, she stressed the values of honesty, modesty, and love to her young son.
The same values were taught to young William when he attended a Friends school in Baltimore. Set up in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such schools provided a "guarded education" for Quaker children, stressing practical lessons from the Bible, while avoiding distracting subjects such as art and music. For a basic education in the 3 Rs probably no better schools existed in the early nineteenth century.
A boyhood friend of Procter said that their schoolteacher possessed "rare gifts and attainments" and encouraged their individual intellectual interests. Young William delighted in mineralogy and botany, bringing specimens to school to show the other boys. Even at a young age, Procter impressed teachers and classmates with both his studiousness and gentle manner.
Procter left the Friends school in his early teens because of another family difficulty. His older sister's husband, proprietor of a cooper's shop, fell ill and asked young William for aid. Charles Bullock, a close friend of Procter, speculated that his experience as a cooper's assistant initiated Procter's life-long "knowledge of tools and ... dexterity in the use of them." Young William soon tired of this work, however, and asked his mother if he could learn the drug business in Philadelphia.
Procter had become acquainted with the character of the drug business on a previous visit to Philadelphia. His mother was a close friend of Tabitha Turnpenny, whose son was apprenticed to Henry M. Zollickoffer, an apothecary at the corner of Sixth and Pine in Philadelphia. Joseph Turnpenny quickly befriended Procter and proudly showed off Zollickoffer's establishment. Procter decided that pharmacy was more interesting than barrel making and entered Zollickoffer's shop as an apprentice in 1831 at the age of fourteen. For the next forty years, pharmacy dominated almost all of Procter's waking hours.
By 1831, when Procter entered Zollickoffer's shop, the apprenticeship system had begun to decline in most other areas of skilled work. Increased mechanization, improved transportation, and a larger urban population decreased the profitability of small-scale manufacturing enterprises. The mechanic, rather than the skilled artisan, became the new bulwark of the middle class. To educate this new class of workers (and keep them out of taverns), mechanic's institutes and libraries were established in the larger eastern cities. Professional education, most notably medical schools, also expanded during the first half of the nineteenth century. Pharmaceutical education took a middle ground, with apprenticeship serving as the prime mode of learning, and formal lecture courses as an optional "rounding off" of a young man's education. Throughout Procter's life, no effective statutes required any level of pharmaceutical education. Anyone with sufficient capital and nerve could open a drugstore.
Apprenticeship offered to William a valued introduction to the scientific side of pharmacy. Living with the Zollickoffers, Procter developed the habit of rising early in the morning for a session of what he called "self- culture" before going to work in the shop. At first, this consisted of reading the latest chemistry and physics texts. After finishing the course of studies offered at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, Procter added history, biography, and moral philosophy to his personal reading program. Forty years later, Procter remembered fondly his apprenticeship for the learning opportunities it afforded him.
Procter's experience is in contrast to those of other pharmacists of the early nineteenth century who generally recalled their apprenticeships as long hours of drudgery. Besides the usual "wholesome development of muscle through wielding the ponderous pestle, handling the sieves and working the screw press," Procter's apprenticeship allowed him time for scientific investigations. Not only was Zollickoffer's shop laboratory open to Procter's efforts, but just four blocks north sat the drugstore of Elias Durand (1794–1873). Durand had received his pharmacy training in France and had served as a pharmacien in the Napoleonic army. After Bonaparte's fall, Durand came to America and eventually established his apothecary shop in 1817. An avid amateur scientist and a leading member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Durand made his pharmacy a center for botanical and pharmaceutical experimentation in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia. Procter described Durand's shop as "the daily resort of such men as Drs. Horner, McClellan, Mitchell, Meigs, Mutter, Bache and Goddard." Through his friendship with Durand and his able apprentice, Augustine Duhamel, Procter learned of the great achievements of French pharmacists such as Pierre-Joseph Pelletier, Joseph-Bienaimé Caventou, and Pierre-Jean Robiquet during the 1820s and 1830s. Durand encouraged young Procter to pursue serious investigations and had an expensive set of metric weights imported from France for Procter to use. This interaction probably inspired Procter to obtain the working knowledge of French that he displayed in later years and emulate French pharmaceutical science long after Germans gained ascendancy in the field.
Procter's formal education, broken off several years before, resumed in 1835 when he enrolled at the school run by the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. Active members of the College, like Zollickoffer, allowed their senior apprentices time off in the evenings to attend lectures. The College set up its course similar to those of medical schools of the day: students attended the same series of lectures twice, wrote a thesis, and passed an examination. To receive the diploma as a Graduate in Pharmacy, the student had to possess four years of apprenticeship with a member of the College. Although the requirements were not particularly difficult, most students opted to attend just some of the lectures and forgo graduation. They attended lectures to round out their education and viewed sitting through the same lectures twice as a waste of time and money. In addition, neither the state nor the public regarded a school diploma as a requirement for practice. Procter, however, fulfilled all requirements and graduated from the school in 1837. Less involved than medical education, which took up about five or six hours of the student's day for three or four months, pharmacy instruction took place two or three evenings a week, after the shops were closed. During the first twenty years or so of the College, two courses of lectures were taught: materia medica and pharmacy, and chemistry. Procter heard these subjects taught by two recognized experts: Joseph Carson and Franklin Bache.
Carson, who had his first training as a pharmacist, graduated from the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1830. Taking over the materia medica and pharmacy course at the College's school in 1836, Carson also assumed the editorship of the American Journal of Pharmacy published by the College. Author of works on medical botany, Carson succeeded the renowned George B. Wood as professor of materia medica at the University of Pennsylvania in 1850. Procter was fortunate to have Carson as his teacher in this important course. All too often in nineteenth-century pharmacy schools, the combined materia medica and pharmacy course was taught by a physician who cared little about pharmacy and taught less. Carson, with his pharmacy background, was an exception to this general rule.
Even as early as the late 1830s, Franklin Bache (1792–1864) established himself as a prominent medicinal chemist as joint author of the Dispensatory of the United States with George B. Wood. In contrast to the fluent lecture style of Carson, Dr. Bache delivered his instruction in a slow, precise fashion, emulated by his student Procter. Together with his close friend Wood, Bache dominated the process of drug standardization in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century.
Carson and Bache provided Procter and his classmates with the best instruction available in the United States in their two areas of expertise. Procter's contact with these two leaders of Philadelphia medicine and pharmacy later opened up important avenues for his career. In 1846 Carson supported Procter's candidacy to become the first occupant of the newly created chair in practical pharmacy at the College; and in 1848 Carson took Procter as his coeditor of the American Journal of Pharmacy. Impressed by Procter's abilities as a pharmaceutical chemist, Bache asked him to collaborate in the revision of the United States Pharmacopoeia and the United States Dispensatory, key medical and pharmaceutical works of the time.
Procter learned his subjects well, and in 1837 passed the examination administered by the College committee and received his "degree of Graduate of Pharmacy." Along with learning the basics of pharmaceutical science, Procter had gained values and ideals that would guide him throughout his career. Although Bache and Carson practiced medicine, they expressed concern with the future of pharmacy practice. A higher level of professional practice by pharmacists promised a more reliable supply of drugs and medicines. Bache emphasized the utility of chemistry in the discovery of new drugs and the improvements of old drug preparations. Both of these outcomes, he hoped, would push back the forces of quackery. Carson tried to inculcate some vocational pride in his students by illustrating the successes of pharmaceutical science, and by downplaying the commercial side of pharmacy.
Procter remained with his preceptor after finishing his apprenticeship and schooling in 1837. As Zollickoffer's senior clerk, he had the pharmaceutical responsibilities of the owner without the financial obligations, a situation that provided him with ample opportunities to hone his skills. With his evenings free from ledger sheets and the burdens of business, Procter continued his self-imposed program of education. In 1840 he attended lectures given by some notable Philadelphia scientists of the day, including the famed chemist Robert Hare. Afterwards, Procter went back to Zollickoffer's and replicated the demonstrations given by the professors that evening. In 1841 he acted as the secretary of the College's committee on the revision of the Pharmacopoeia, another valuable experience. During the next two years he learned French and read more literature and history. Finally, in 1844, at the age of 27, Procter left the secure environment of Zollickoffer's shop to set out on his own.
In his diary Procter reflected on what the future held for him in his new shop at Ninth and Lombard:
I am about to leave Sixth and Pine streets, after so long a residence. What singular events occur! Little did such a prospect appear probable some years ago. Steadiness and calmness of mind, how important to the proper appreciation of life! This I daily become more convinced of, and find cause to note the want of it in my own case. Reflection steadily and calmly directed to moral and intellectual improvement, with all the rigor of justice, and all the affection of mercy, how few can truly govern themselves! I have made little progress in this all-important power, and have too frequent cause to regret acts of indiscretion and weakness.
As Rorabaugh has pointed out, the 1830s and 1840s were difficult times for apprentices and young artisans. As skilled trades became more and more mechanized, underemployed and pessimistic young tradesmen turned to hedonistic pursuits and eschewed self-improvement. An entirely new segment of the economy geared toward entertainment and distraction arose to meet the exploding demand. Perhaps Procter had been tempted by a music hall or opera house. For the purpose for his existence, young William had chosen progress based on self-improvement. As prestige and personal achievement came to this quiet, reflective man, he became a strong advocate for the approach that had guided him.
The diary extract is full of self-doubt, but as Procter matured he became more confident in his abilities. Still, he retained the humility and sincerity that had marked him early as an exceptional individual. His diary did not survive, but the published comments of his friends and acquaintances do. They paint a picture of a quiet, slightly introverted gentleman with a sincere belief in the progress of his calling through individual improvement.
On the occasion of his death, several men described the personality and character of William Procter, Jr. A few words recur: moral, sincere, sober, quiet, genial, and most of all, modest. Evan T. Ellis, a Philadelphia pharmacist who saw Procter regularly, remarked that his "modesty and retiring nature" never changed, even as his fame grew. As one colleague put it, Procter was "[m]odest and diffident even to the extent of rendering injustice to himself."
Procter's modesty and shyness made him reticent with strangers, especially groups. When Frederick Hoffmann, a fellow pharmaceutical journalist, first met Procter, he was surprised that such an expressive writer spoke so quietly and with so much reserve. Away from crowded association meetings or hotel lobbies, Procter became "a genial and sympathetic companion and friend." Former students commented on his readiness to answer any pharmaceutical question, any time.
For Procter this kind of help usually took the form of listening as much as talking. At pharmaceutical meetings, Procter contributed to discussions by first sitting back and absorbing all the points of a controversy. After the initial heat of debate subsided, he would take the floor and summarize the alternatives before the group. This approach extended to personal conversations, during which he often would listen and then organize the facts as he saw them. His simple and direct style elicited confidence in those who talked with him, so it is no surprise that he was a much-sought confidant and adviser.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from In Service to American Pharmacy by Gregory J. Higby. Copyright © 1992 the University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations,Preface,
Introduction,
1. A Glimpse at Procter's Character,
2. William Procter as Practicing Pharmacist,
3. Pharmaceutical Scientist and Technologist,
4. The Pursuit of Drug Quality,
5. Editor of the American Journal of Pharmacy,
6. Pioneering Pharmaceutical Educator,
7. Procter and Pharmaceutical Organizations,
8. Concluding Remarks,
Appendixes,
A. Procter's Paris Speech,
B. Examples of Procter's Writing Style,
C. Example of Procter's Work in Drug Assay,
D. Example of Procter's Pharmaceutical Art,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,