‘Skill of a Peculiar Kind’: A Declaration for Pharmacy

Written in 1823 by 14 Boston druggists and apothecaries, the founding constitution and bylaws of what would become the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy—the nation's second pharmacy school and the oldest institution of higher education in Boston—reads like a Declaration of Independence for pharmacy.

It opens with a bold assertion: preparing medicines requires "knowledge and skill of a peculiar kind," and ignorance is "productive of numerous evils and abuses" with "serious consequences to health and life." It goes on to call for "systematic education," "pharmaceutical investigation," the sharing of professional knowledge, and a commitment "to discountenance the sale of spurious, adulterated, and inferior articles." Finally, its authors pledged to "adopt in principle" these ideals and "adhere in practice."

Like the Declaration of Independence, the document was a response to persistent problems such as inconsistent training, unsafe medicines, and the absence of professional standards. The men who signed it were the first generation to come of age in the new republic. Raised in the aftermath of the American Revolution, they inherited the Founders' belief that citizens could build institutions to serve the public good.

Apothecaries had already played an important role in the Revolutionary War. Stories of muskets and minutemen dominate Boston's historical memory, but disease killed far more Continental soldiers than British bullets. Apothecaries compounded powders, pills, tinctures, and ointments by hand, preparing remedies from opium, laudanum, mercury compounds, Peruvian bark, camphor, and botanical medicines. When George Washington ordered the mass inoculation of Continental troops against smallpox in 1777—one of the war's most consequential medical decisions—physicians and apothecaries worked together to prepare and administer the treatments that helped preserve the army.

The 19-page founding constitution for what is now MCPHS also established the framework for a new profession. Following its preamble are articles governing the College's structure, academic requirements, and expectations for its members. Candidates for a diploma were required to attend two courses of lectures and study "four years with one or more respectable druggist or apothecary." Members were expected to be of "correct moral deportment," pay a $5 admission fee, attend monthly meetings, and contribute to the profession by publishing their work.

But the 14 founders invested in books before they built classrooms.

With an eye on the future, the bylaws also established a Library Committee charged with acquiring "a collection of works on chemistry, materia medica, pharmacy, and such other subjects as relate to the objects of the College." Beginning with a $25 appropriation, the Library quickly grew to approximately 125 volumes and was established more than 40 years before the College adopted its first formal curriculum.

Read today, the founders' words feel strikingly current. Counterfeit medicines, evidence-based practice, advanced education, and public trust are still central concerns of pharmacy. Students at MCPHS now study pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, genomics, and patient care in laboratories and classrooms unimaginable to an early nineteenth-century apothecary. Yet the questions confronting the school's founders still resonate: How should medicines be prepared? Who should be trusted to dispense them? What standards best protect the public?

If the Declaration of Independence asserted that free people could govern themselves, then the founders of MCPHS believed a profession should govern itself through education, shared standards, scientific inquiry, and a commitment to public health. Nearly two centuries later, the goal remains the same: "to advance the character and interest of the profession."