United States Pharmacopeial Convention: Respecting the past, moving confidently into the future

For almost two hundred years after the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts Bay in 1620, there was no authoritative resource to ensure the quality of medicines or a system for naming them in America. In the early years of colonial America and the young republic, there were a number of apothecaries, blacksmiths, midwives, and others who “practiced medicine ” by providing their own preparations or popular English medicines to treat the ill. Educated physicians from England did not come to America, America only had a few homegrown ‘practitioners ’ trained through apprenticeships. There were no medical societies, hospitals, or medical schools until after the mid 1700s. Clergymen and public officials also “treated ” the population under their authority, and relied on imported books and dispensatories based on the Edinburgh and London Pharmacopeias. During the Revolutionary War a few local pharmacopeias were published. The Lititz Pharmacopoeia was the first in 1778, compiled by William Brown who was trained in Edinburgh. Another small pharmacopeia was published for the French military hospitals in North America, the Compendium Pharmaceuticum by Jean Francois Costé. After the war ended the use of these works diminished and for the most part American physicians went back to using British pharmacopoeias and dispensatories. Physicians began to emerge during these early years of the republic, and they practiced both medicine and pharmacy by diagnosing diseases, and compounded and dispensed medicines. But still there was no assurance that these medicines were composed of quality materials and even if they were potent. John Morgan, who established the first medical school in America in Philadelphia in 1765, proposed the “composing a pharmacopoeia for use by Physicians and Practitioners of Pennsylvania ” at a meeting and on June 3, 1788 passed a motion to appoint a committee to “form a Pharmacopoeia for use of the College.” But by 1789, the interest in a pharmacopoeia just for Pennsylvania had dwindled. Support grew, instead, for creating a national pharmacopoeia that would bring order to these preparation