[Pictures from the Dolphin Pharmacy in Copenhagen].

Abstract

The development of the pharmacy in the 19th and 20th centuries is illustrated by education and activity in the Dolphin Pharmacy in Copenhagen. The career within chemistry and pharmacy started with an apprenticeship of 4 year in the pharmacies. The Dolphin Pharmacy was responsible for part of the examination, i.e. the examination of the preparation of medicine. Passing the examination the chemist's assistant was free to prepare and to dispense medicine. Graduation as a pharmaceutical candidate was necessary to obtain license. Lectures in chemistry, physics, pharmacy, botany and pharmacognosy were obtained at the University of Copenhagen and the Polytechnic, but no curriculum was available. A rational education was obtained later on by the establishment of the School of Pharmacy in 1892. The proprietor pharmacists of the Dolphin Pharmacy were excellent scientists who contributed to the development of pharmacy. Pictures of the pharmacy from about the 1930s show the manufacture of medicines on the basis of a prescription and a pharmacopoeia. Ointments containing zinc white, sulphur and tar were used for various skin diseases and for the tiresome cough; cough mixtures containing codeine or extract of ipecacuanha root were used. In the 1930s the medicine for injection was sterilized and the tablet machine was the breakthrough for a rational production in the pharmacy. However, at the end of the 1900s it was no more possible to compete with the pharmaceutical industry and all the production of medicine was taken over by the industry.