Posts in category

Pharmacy History


A Tasmanian news magazine from August 1930 shines a light on advertising claims for medicines of that time, writes Ralph Tapping The Illustrated Tasmanian Mail was a 70-page weekly magazine …

Is the professional-style pharmacy out of date? Is the ‘Chemist-Mart’ on supermarket lines inevitable? These questions were being asked by AJP in October 1969 A report in the October 1969 …

Ralph Tapping takes a closer look at two relatively recent epidemics that generated fear and apprehension, but also led to vital medical breakthroughs   In our last column, we discussed the …

Pharmacy’s problems escaped the “average housewife and the ‘man in the street’” back in 1969, although the public doubted “they would earn as much as a bricklayer” A four city …

Plague and pandemics have been with us for as long as humans have been on the earth. Ralph Tapping looks at some historic examples and how the current pandemic fits …

Ralph Tapping takes a look at more of the questionable treatments offered in pharmacies in days gone by, including a rather toxic snake bite remedy Following upon my previous article …

Pharmacy historian Ralph Tapping has been looking into some of the questionable treatments sold in pharmacy in the recent past  Laudanum and other preparations containing tincture of opium, for example …

A look back at some of the ‘health misadventures’ common in the earlier years of the 20th century, by Ralph Tapping  Health follies’ of the last century might otherwise be …

A look at even more pharmacists who have excelled in sports, as well as the dispensary AJP recently published a feature looking at nine pharmacists who have gone on to achieve …

We take a look at some pharmacists who have made a name for themselves on the sporting field Jane Crafter Golf champion Jane Crafter was a pharmacist for three years …

Four of the most lethal infectious diseases of our time and how we’re overcoming them Spanish flu killed more people than the Great War that preceded it. And tuberculosis even …

For around sixty years “Wawn’s Wonder Wool” was a familiar over-the-counter item in pharmacies throughout Australia, says Ralph Tapping   Victor A. Wawn was one of the younger generation of …