This microfiche collection provides scholars, students, and historians with a fine collection of primary sources for comprehensive study of the history of pharmacy as a science and a profession in the United States. It traces the practice of pharmacy from the Colonial Period, when European methods met native American naturalist treatments, through the development of modern pharmaceutical practice based on biomedical research.

The collection contains books on pharmaceutical law, treatises, lectures, textbooks, and other antiquarian and scholarly materials. There are drug catalogs and formula books that provide vivid descriptions of medicines and instructions on how to use them. Botany texts document the medicinal use of various plants in the treatment of illness.

An annotated bibliography to support this collection has been prepared by Dr. Nydia M. King. The American Institute of the History of Pharmacy is publisher of the bibliography, entitled A Selection of Primary Sources for the History of Pharmacy in the United States: Books and Trade Catalogs from the Colonial Period to 1940.

Any institution supporting a degree-granting pharmacy program as well as allied health science programs such as nursing or medicine will find this collection to be a necessary resource for teaching and research.

The collection was filmed at the University of Wisconsin in cooperation with the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. Some books are from the National Library of Medicine at Bethesda, Maryland and the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, Illinois.