By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
Most know the first two lines of the “witches’ recipe” in Macbeth but could you list the ingredients it calls to be put in the bubbly cauldron? While the ‘fillet of a fenny snake’, ‘eye of newt’, ‘toe of frog’, ‘wood of bat, ‘tongue of dog, ‘adder’s fork’, ‘blind-worm’s sting’, ‘lizard’s leg’ and ‘owlet’s wing’ don’t sound too appealing, they are simply code words for common ingredients, often herbs, found in a well-stocked apothecary.
Up until just a century or so ago, pharmacists turned to nature’s gifts for cures and ailments. Many of the active ingredients in pills and other “modern” drugs are simply synthetic reproductions of the same chemicals naturally found in plants. In fact, the word apothecary means “storage for wine, spices and herbs.”
The pharmacies of today (not the “druggists” of the past) require strict safety guidelines, involving years of training and examinations for an individual desiring to be a pharmacist. This process, too, has drastically changed over the last 100-150 years. This month, through the Foundation Speaker Series, the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library is featuring a book called “Ghosts of Eden Park” about the fascinating life of a pharmacist-turned-lawyer-turned convict, George Remus, who found a loophole in the system to be able to sell liquor out of his pharmacy/drug store during Prohibition.
While I don’t want to leak any spoilers, I will say that Remus has quite an infamous role in the history of the pharmaceutical business, and in Ohio in particular (The State of Ohio committed him to an insane asylum, and was later released from a correctional facility in Lima, Ohio). You’ll have to read to book to get the full scoop, but I can introduce you to some other more, shall we say, legit pharmacists in Tiffin’s history.
Elisha B. Hubbard was one of the most successful pharmacists in Tiffin’s history, starting his Tiffin practice in 1874. He served in many other capacities in the community, warranting him a biography in the “75th Anniversary Souvenir,” which has been digitized on the SCDL and from where this photo was taken.
When Seneca County was founded in 1822, the practice of medicine was still extremely rudimentary. The United States Pharmacopeia was only two years old and the first pharmacy school, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, had only been founded the year before. Family doctors and druggists, who at that time only needed two years’ worth of courses and a 4-year apprenticeship, “compounded” their own medications and delivered them via house calls. Medicinal plants, however, had already been known to mankind for thousands of years. In Mesopotamia, clay tablets with recipes for salves and poultices have been found, which called for mustard, fig, myrrh, snakeskin, and even bat droppings, mixed with wine, beer, or milk.
Only one-quarter of pharmacists were compounding medicine, a process of combining multiple medicines into one liquid for patients with a multitude of health issues, by the middle of the 20th century. Historically, this would have included herbs, native plants, minerals, and more clandestine ingredients and most druggists had developed their own unique recipes and concoctions. Basically, their apothecaries served as makeshift laboratories in addition to being shops. However, not all were secret bootlegging operations like Remus’s (our pharmaceutical bandit in question).
Medical doctors often doubled as pharmacists, compounding their own medicines based on each of their patients and then delivering the concoctions on house calls. Dr. Jacob Bridinger was one of Tiffin’s traveling doctors. He started his practice in 1877, traveling as far as Michigan and Indiana while his son, Frank, managed the “headquarters” in Tiffin. By 1896, there were seven independent pharmacies in Tiffin, including M.G. Witschner on 7 S. Washington St., whose ad states their “drugs and chemicals are the best in purity and strength that we can get. We desire to keep our good reputation, hence cannot afford to sell inferior goods,” and a Morcher’s Pharmacy located across from the former Opera House, selling “Pure Drugs, Medicines, Chemicals, Toilet Articles and Fancy Goods.”
Claiming to be the “most elegant and attractive in the city,” Wagner & Maiberger’s, once located at 52 Perry Street, might be the most widely-known historic pharmacy in Tiffin. The two German immigrants were in business for a long time together and created a trusted business by many of Tiffin’s citizens.
The San-Mar Pharmacy was originally located on the corner of Sandusky and Market Street. It was opened by John Grieselding in the 1950s.
Elisha B. Hubbard was claimed to have been known throughout Northwest Ohio. He was a mentor for budding local pharmacists and trained more than one who went on to establish their own successful businesses. A native of Massachusetts, he began his career in that state before relocating first to Bellevue, Ohio, and then eventually to Tiffin in 1874. At one point in his career he served as the “President of the Local Board of Druggists.” Outside of serving as one of the city’s reputable pharmacists, he was president of the Tiffin Chamber of Commerce, secretary of the Election Board, honorary commissioner of the Ohio Centennial Expedition, a Knights Templar, member of the Order of the Elks, and vestryman of Trinity Episcopal Church.
One of Hubbard’s understudies, Owen A. Ohl, became a prominent pharmacist for over a decade after the eight years he spent with Hubbard. A biography in the “Historical and Business Review Seneca County 1891-1892” describes how it was common in this era to believe that all diseases derived from “impure blood.” Ohl sold Dasynia hair tonic and Sarsaparilla with dandelion and pepsin.
Another pharmacist, remembered by a George Gundlach in “Ramblin Comments on Tiffin 1891-1926” was Albert Hayden, a “quiet, genteel druggist of the older school,” who was fluent in Latin and operated a drug store and soda fountain near the corner of Washington and Madison Streets. The author vividly recalls this building “always smelled of vanilla and chocolate.”
While soda fountains inside a drugstore had been a staple since the 1860s, the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s are known as the “soda fountain era” of pharmacy. Old-fashioned short courses, designed as supplements to apprenticeship, were falling out of favor and would soon be made obsolete, which is perhaps why Hayden was deemed “old school.” The Basic Material for a Pharmaceutical Curriculum was published in 1927 and the Accreditation Council for Pharmaceutical Education (ACPE) was founded in 1932, making a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree a four-year gig minimum. By 1941, 64 out of 67 colleges of pharmacy had adopted this four-year degree standard. Five years later, the American Council on recommended the establishment of a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy program.
Individually owned and operated pharmacies are few and far between these days, as corporations have taken over. One of the last family-owned pharmacies Tiffinites might remember was San-Mar Pharmacy, started by John Grieselding in the 1950s, who chose its name from the two corners streets where it originally resided, Sandusky and Market. It was known for its “red carpet service.”
Once more official guidelines were instituted during this time period, the pharmaceutical field entered into the “Lick, Stick, Pour and More Era,” which lasted from the 1950s through the 1970s. By this point, George Remus, our criminal inspiration for this article, would no longer have been able to skirt through the same loopholes he once used. He passed away in 1952. For his complete story, check out the book at Tiffin-Seneca Public Library.
Works cited:
Athletic Association of of the Tiffin High School. “Historical Sketches of the Churches and Schools of Tiffin, Ohio.” 1903. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22326/rec/2
Barnes, Myron. “Between the Eighties.” 1982. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65253/rec/1
Baughman, A.J. “Seneca County History Volume 2.” 1911. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17317/rec/2
Calvert High School. “Yearbook Calvertana 1980”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/18133/rec/1
“George Remus: ‘King of the Bootleggers’ During Prohibition. Alcohol Problems & Solutions. https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/george-remus-king-of-the-bootleggers-during-prohibition/
Gundlach, George. “Ramblin Comments on Tiffin 1891-1926”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22212/rec/1
“History of Pharmacy: Key Moments in Pharmacy History.” Pharmacy is Right for Me. https://pharmacyforme.org/learn-about-pharmacy/history-of-pharmacy/
Historical and Business Review Seneca County 1891-1892. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/15697/rec/1
Howe, Barbara. “Building of the Week.” Seneca Sentinel. 1980. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28007/rec/1
Seneca County Business Directory 1896, Watson & Dorman Publishers. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/23204/rec/1
Tiffin Area, Ohio. Windsor Publications, 1974. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25131/rec/5
Urick, Benjamin Y. and Emily V. Meggs. “Towards a Greater Professional Standing: Evolution of Pharmacy Practice and Education, 1920-2020.” National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information. July 20, 2019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6789879/
Wust, MaryKate. “The Evolution of the Apothecary for the Apothe-curious.” Penn Medicine News. Oct. 13, 2017. https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2017/october/the-evolution-of-the-apothecary-for-the-apothecurious
Center for the History of Medicine at Countway Library, Boston, MA. “Who Were the Apothecaries?” https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/exhibits/show/apothecary-jars/sequence