According to Wikipedia, The scope of pharmacy practice includes more traditional roles such as compounding and dispensing medications, and it also includes more modern services related to health care, including clinical services, reviewing medications for safety and efficacy, and providing drug information. Pharmacists, therefore, are the experts on drug therapy and are the primary health professionals who optimize use of medication for the benefit of the patients.
The histo
ry of pharmacy is in every sense as old as humanity – it is primarily the investigation of first herbal and then chemical (and in an integrative sense in modern times, both) ingredients on the human body, in an effort (generally) to promote the best possible health outcome. What comes to mind generally when thinking of pharmacy in history though, is the romanticised Victorian and Edwardian period, with their artistic typographic signs and amber bottles of long since prohibited substances.
A Tasmanian Museum has launched and exhibit of a local classic pharmacy’s interior, “recreating that sense of wonderment of the old pharmacies at the turn of century.” Click through to the ABC news story for more!