PubMed · 11609447
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E W Stieb. 1971. Facts about artifacts.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11609447/
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Portable medicine chests could be considered as the oldest type of pharmacy in the 19th century Serbia. Historically their emergence could be associated with the appearance of the first physicians who kept post in Serbia. They were foreigners engaged on a contract to work during the reign of Prince Milos Obrenovic. According to the data preserved at the State Archive of Serbia (Chancellery of the principality, State Council, Home Office - Medical Department), medicine chests existed as late as the middle of the last century. They were an important source for health protection of the Serbian people as well as for distribution of drugs during the course of the 19th century. This article aims to analyse the content of these chests, based on the archive data records referring to the regular supervision of the medicine chests conducted every fourth year by the district physician. The legal aspect of keeping the portable medicine chest will be discussed as well.
So far as pharmaceutical research in concerned, serendipity plays a significant part even in the genesis of rigorous research. Quite often, scientific discoveries occur by chance, without searching anything or when searching something else. Unforseen discoveries win the medicines of the central nervous system, as well as the side effects of some medicines which received then new indications. Aspirin, iproniazide, reserpine, phenothiazine... Serendipity played its part in drug discovery as well as in any human activity.
The aim of this work is to estimate the influence of pharmaceutical law on the development of pharmacy in Kaunas province in the 19th century. In czarist Russia of the 19th century (which covered the majority of Lithuania) the trade of medicines was regulated severely. A statute of pharmacy issued in 1836 claimed that whenever giving a permission to establish a new pharmacy, the agreement of the owners of the nearest pharmacies should have been got beforehand. In such a way the law gave an indirect right for pharmacists to influence the establishment of new pharmacies. It also became an obstacle for a natural formation of the network of pharmacies and, thus, stimulated a creation of the monopoly of pharmacists. After the proclamation of the statute, i. e. from 1836 till 1840, only two new pharmacies were opened in Kaunas province, and later, during a thirteen-year period, (1841-1853) not a single pharmacy was founded there. Pharmacists, due to the avoidance of competition and fear to lose the monopoly of the trade of medicines in a region, tried to prevent other people from the establishment of pharmacies. They used to establish pharmacies in neighbouring towns themselves, to create the branches of their pharmacies or the networks of pharmacies of their family. In fact, the unfounded decrees of the government institutions of czarist Russia ampered the formation of a sufficient network of pharmacies and the development of the care of public health in the provinces of czarist Russia.