An Approach to Teaching the History of Pharmacy

Abstract

I believe that the professional education of pharmacists benefits substantially from the inclusion of the history of pharmacy as a formal part of the professional curriculum. Incorporating a few lectures that attempt to summarize the history of pharmacy within the framework of another professional practice course is better than nothing. However, my observations convince me that a specific course in the history of pharmacy, offered as a professional elective, is much more effective in developing a conscious appreciation of the importance and value of the history of pharmacy. Ideally, specialists and scholars in the history of pharmacy should take the lead in providing this instruction. Realistically, however, it is unlikely that most of our colleges are ready to commit a faculty position for this purpose. Who then will serve as teachers of the history of pharmacy? In many cases, a pharmacist-faculty member who has a serious interest in the history of pharmacy may be able to serve as an effective instructor for an introductory history of pharmacy course. My predecessor, the late Dean Roy A. Bowers, and I are examples of such teachers of the history of pharmacy. Dean Bowers developed his interest in the history of pharmacy by his contact with Dean Kremers and Professor Urdang when he was an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s. He was later influenced by his association and collaboration with another distinguished scholar in the history of pharmacy, Professor David L. Cowen, of Rutgers University. When Dean Bowers came to Rutgers in 1951, Professor Cowen taught a required course in the history of phar