The peak of cold and flu season is fast approaching, and many of us are heading to our local pharmacy to stock up on medications, COVID tests, masks, and other essentials to get us through the season. Pharmacies are essential businesses in our communities and pharmacists have years of medical expertise to draw on when they help us decipher our prescriptions, recommend an OTC remedy, or administer vaccines. While the concept of creating and selling the remedies for what ails us can be traced back to medieval apothecaries, pharmacies as we know them today are only about 200 years old.
The SCHS Library recently received a donation of a pharmacy prescription book from Kerste’s Pharmacy. The donor asked us whether Kerste’s was “the oldest pharmacy in Schenectady” - a question that led us down a research rabbit-hole. Our answer to that question and other information that we found in our research will be compiled in a future blog post, but we wanted to take a moment to share some of the materials in the SCHS collections that relate to the history of pharmacies in our area.
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Page from one of the Kerste's Pharmacy prescription books showing prescription notes pasted into a large ledger. Kerste's Pharmacy Records: ledgers of prescriptions processed through Kerste's Pharmacy, 1886, 1918, 1945.
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E. Steinfuhrer Drugs and Medicines. Southeast corner of Ferry and State Streets. Photo from the Grems-Doolittle Library Photo Collection.
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Ad for Richard Fuller, Druggist and Apothecary from the Grems-Doolittle Library Clippings Collection, Pharmacies File.
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Learn more about the SCHS Library collections on our website, https://schenectadyhistorical.org/collections/, and our Guide to the History of Medicine in Schenectady County: https://schenectadyhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/History-of-Medicine-in-Schenectady-County-Research-Guide.pdf
