Pharmacy apprenticeship

Born near Melrose, Scotland, in 1881, Agnes Thomson Borrowman61 spent 4 years completing a pharmacy apprenticeship before joining the Edinburgh pharmacist, William Lyon, as a junior assistant. During her limited spare time, she studied for the Minor at the Edinburgh Central School of Pharmacy. She passed the examination in 1903, at the age of 21. 

While Joseph Priestley generally receives credit for the discovery of oxygen, it was Carl Sheele (1742-1786) who probably deserves credit as the first to isolate oxygen. Scheele was a Swede who became interested in chemistry during his apprenticeship as an apothecary. Scheele acquired his own pharmacy and during the process researched the production of different medicines. Scheele realized that common air contained... 

Ella Caird,72 born in 1894, spent a 3-year apprenticeship at the Buchanan School of Pharmacy for Women between 1911 and 1914. Entering the Pharmaceutical Society School of Pharmacy, she proceeded to accumulate more awards than any other student up to that time. Her obituarist, C. A. Johnson, commented As Ella Caird, she gave early warning of her potential at The Square , when passing the Minor in 1914, and the Ph.C. in 1915, with top place in every subject — and this was against the formidable opposition of at least two fellow students who were later to become professors in their subjects at the same college. 72 She became the first woman demonstrator at the College and also became an assistant to the Examiners. 

Evan Tyson Ellis, The Story of a Very Old Philadelphia Drug Store, American Journal of Pharmacy 75 (1903) 65. As an interesting aside, the Charles Ellis Company served as the business that gave Joseph P. Remington (1847-1918), one of America s important leaders of pharmacy, his four-year apprenticeship. 

Like Wiegleb, Klaproth, and Liphardt, Martius stated that he missed personal teaching in his apprenticeship, and instead learned by doing and observing. But he complained much less about the lack of chemical education than the three apothecary-chemists. As late as 1847, at the age of 91 and at a time when many prospective German pharmacists also studied pharmacy at universities, he had no... 

The study of pharmacy began with an apprenticeship of three years. Emile Bourquelot served this with Loret, a pharmacist at Sedan (Ardennes). Loret inculcated in him the taste for and habit of botanic excursions. Bourquelot was to keep this all his life. Almost all of the plants,... 

Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817) grew up in a family of tailors in Harz, Germany. He became an apprentice in a pharmacy and acquired deep knowledge of chemistry mostly by studying alone. In spite of his apprenticeship and later work with his own pharmacy, he was the foremost chemist of his time regarding the analysis of minerals and ores. In 1810, at the age of 67, he became the first holder of the newly estabhshed professorship in chemistry at the University of Berhn. He worked there until his death in 1817. We met him in Chapter 18, regarding the discovery of titanium. 

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