Farmacie, apothekers en de geest van Thorbecke. Farmaceutische disciplinevorming aan het eind van de negentiende eeuw

Abstract

Pharmacy, apothecaries and the spirit of Thorbecke. The shaping of the pharmaceutical discipline at the end of the nineteenth century In 1865, Dutch parliament accepted four laws concerning the organization of national health care and the medical profession. An important aspect of this legislation, that was to regulate health care in The Netherlands for many decades, was the elevation of pharmacy to academic levels. Henceforth, the only possibility to become an apothecary was to enrol in the pharmaceutical programme at one of the four Dutch universities. Initially, the legislation was welcomed by the Dutch Society for the Advancement of Pharmacy (NMP) and leading persons in the pharmaceutical world. Many believed the laws had granted a monopoly to apothecaries in the field of the delivery of medicines. This, however, did not prove to be the case. It had never even been intended by J.R. Thorbecke, the minister of internal affairs who had drafted the laws. In the view of this liberal politician the state should guarantee the availability as well as the academic standards of pharmaceutical education. Consumer's choice or interprofessional relationships were, however, no concern of the state. As a consequence, apothecaries had to earn credit and legitimacy with the public on their own. This article looks into the reaction of the 'pharmaceutical field' to the medical legislation of 1865. In the liberal political climate of the second half of the nineteenth century, apothecaries were trying to define their new academic identity. At the same time, they were fighting a professional struggle with physicians on the one hand and druggists, chemists and quacks on the other. It becomes clear that the ideal profile that was devised by pharmaceutical professors and other leaders did not match the professional conduct of apothecaries. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, pharmacists looking back on the preceding decades realized the problems of apothecaries of the late nineteenth century were no sign of a failure of pharmacy as a discipline. Instead, they appreciated them as belonging to one of the most important developmental stages of the modern pharmaceutical profession.