Pharm-ing Bookmarks

by

Lauren Roberts

I now subscribe to about a dozen magazines after having gone without for years. What surprised me most, and annoys me the most, are the ads for drugs, which seem to have come out of nowhere and now occupy a significant number of ad pages. Botox, invariably shown with women in their twenties or early thirties, tops the list of annoyances but is by no means the only offender. But it is one of the big ones.

I couldn’t remember seeing ads in magazines for drugs before, and indeed they do not show up in the antique and even merely older editions. But that did not mean pharmaceutical firms stayed quiet. They merely took different routes to reach their “public.” And in the early part of the twentieth century, slightly less than a century ago, corner druggists used practical “gifts” to entice customers to come to them when filling their prescriptions. One of the most popular gifts were bookmark calendars. As is often the case with nineteenth and early twentieth century bookmarks, the artwork is exquisite. Not merely printed on white paper, these bookmarks are beautiful objects meant to last the year.

The two bookmarks shown above are from a druggist called W. S. Geiger, Ph.G. A google search turned up very little on the man aside from a few mentions in Google Books: that he apparently graduated in  1896 from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in April, and that, according to the NARD Journal, he had decided to “open a new store, at Eighth and Cayuga streets, about July 1st . . .” of 1915.

So, having found so little about Geiger, I began to wonder more about the profession’s history. If one thinks back to unregulated medicines and treatments, and the incredible scams that abounded (and still do—think the “v” word), it’s a wonder sometimes that it did become a profession.

According to Wikipedia, “pharmacy” is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs.” The word comes from the Greek pharmakon meaning “drug” or “medicine.” Pharmacists are the experts on drug therapy, and the stores in which they work, pharmacies (or drug stores or, in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, chemists) sell not only prescribed medicines and over-the-counter pain remedies but also often miscellaneous items. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are today at least 2.6 million pharmacists and other pharmaceutical personnel worldwide.

Pharmacists, whether they work for a corporation or own their own small corner business must undergo specialized education and training. They must possess an understanding of the chemical synthesis mode of action of drugs, and their metabolism and psychological effects on people. In the U.S., pharmaceutical specialties include cardiovascular, infectious disease, oncology, pharmacotherapy, nuclear, nutrition, psychiatry, geriatric, and toxicology. The American Pharmacists Association (AphA) is the national organization for pharmacists working in the United States.

Drug stores, as mentioned, often sold more than drugs. In fact, they were popular social gathering places for young and old alike. Frank Kaiser remembers When Drugstores Were Drugstores:

My drugstore, at the corner of Cedar, Meacham and Northwest Highway in Park Ridge, Illinois, was Nielson’s Drugs. It's where I picked up my grandfather’s insulin, where I got every sixth ice cream cone free, where I took my first date. Nielson’s, like most all drugstores of that era, began solely as an apothecary. In those days, druggists weren’t mere pill pushers. With their mortars, pestles and magic—Eureka!—they developed compounds which remedied many illnesses. Legal cocaine and opium played no small part in making most anyone feel better, Later, soda fountains were introduced for customers with upset stomachs. Drink bubbly mineral water, burp, and you were good as new. By the time I came along, soft drinks had replaced bicarbonates, and high traffic for soda pop and ice cream had pushed the druggist to the back of the store. Sure, there was still that bittersweet medicinal/syrupy smell about the place. But no one complained. We were too busy sucking up Vanilla and Cherry Cokes made with syrup and soda water, Lime Rickeys, made from limejuice and soda, and the ever-popular and oh-so-sweet Green River, “First for Thirst Since 1919.”

But pharmacies/drug stores began long before Mr. Kaiser was born. But pharmacies/drug stores began long before Mr. Kaiser was born. A particularly fascinating history can be found at the Drugstore Museum, which is run by Soderlund Village Drug in St. Peter, Minnesota. According to the site, pharmacognosy, one of the five current major divisions of the pharmaceutical curriculum, represents the oldest branch of the profession. Ancient peoples gathered herbs, animals, plants, and minerals and concocted them into often ill-flavored mixtures, not always successfully at first. Numerous remedies were known to the early practitioners of pharmacy and medicine as can be seen in the writings of Theophrastus, Pliny, Dioscorides, and their contemporaries. Eventually, the two professions diverged, the physican prescribing, and the apothecary or pharmacist collecting, preparing, and compounding the substance.

But it wasn’t until 1815 that the actual term “pharmacognosy” was introduced. It had been formed from two Greek words pharmakon (meaning drug) and gnosis, meaning knowledge, thus together it meant, literally, “entire knowledge of drugs.”

But the profession as such did not really come into its own until several decades later. There is debate as to where the first drugstore in American was founded—New Orleans in1823, one in Fredericksburg, Virginia around the time of the Revolutionary War, or elsewhere—but it is certain that the “real” American drugstore began around the Civil War era when the scientific method began to hold sway over previously pushed unsubstantiated antidotes.

Until then, patent medicines, preparations that often contained unidentified and addictive ingredients such as alcohol and opium were marketed by traveling salesmen, often con men, who mixed bottles of various ingredients and sold it from their carnivalesque wagons. Most were claimed to cure many if not all diseases. (Eventually the U.S. government finally stepped in and forced the wording change from “cure” to “remedy” in order to bring a level of honesty into the pharmaceutical industry.) These “cure all diseases” products were called tonics, nostrums, or snake oil, though historians often refer to them as “quack medicine.” One of the more distinctive characters of that era was William Radam, a gardener/botanist and contemporary of Louis Pasteur, believed that all the ailments of the body were a result of microbial infestation of the blood and tissues. He experimented with a variety of chemicals, eventually gaining a patent for his mixture in 1886. His product contained sulfur, nitrate of soda, black oxide of manganese, sandalwood, chloride of potash, wine, pink dye and water.

In addition, early drug manufacturers made their own formulations, and even trusted companies like Sears and Montgomery Wards had large sections of the catalogs devoted to the sale of patent medicines. One such remedy was called “Soothing Baby Syrup” claimed to stop babies’ crying. It did, mostly because it contained opium. And even Kaiser remembered that “Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound (“A Positive Cure for Painful Complaints and Weaknesses so Common to Our Best Female Population”) and Hadacol (“What Put the Pep into Grandma?”) contained so much alcohol that the government later made them illegal to sell without a liquor license.” This was the “straddle” era that Geiger grew up and was trained during.

The drugstores built in the latter part of the nineteenth century were beautiful. This is no exaggeration because the architecture was often of the Art Nouveau style, designed not only to attract attention but to advertise in a non-verbal way that the high expectations of the customers would be met within, that the advice of its people and its products could be trusted, an important consideration in the era that straddled the old and the new. But most didn’t yet have a soda fountain or sandwich counter; these were to come after prohibition.

Thankfully, by the time Geiger received his license the era of quack medicine was reaching its end. That is not to say that drugs were not harmful. It took many years before alcohol, opium, cocaine and even heroin stopped being part of most medicines—at least those dispensed by trained, professional pharmacists. And W. S. Geiger, Ph.G. appears to have been one of them, someone upon whom his community depended. It is to be hoped that the beautiful calendar bookmarks he issued were a reflection of his belief in high quality for his clients too.

Bookmark specifications: 1917
Dimensions: 8 x 2 1/4
Material: Paper and cardboard
Manufacturer: W.S. Geiger
Date: 1916
Acquired: eBay

Bookmark specifications: 1918
Dimensions: 8 ¼ x 2 1/2
Material: Paper and cardboard
Manufacturer: W.S. Geiger
Date: 1917
Acquired: eBay

Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately the same number of books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.