The Schafer Drug Store, which can now be found at Living History Farms, is named after George Schafer. Schafer was the Iowa Pharmacy Association’s first President. The store was named after him in honor of all the service he provided to the IPA in the late 1800s. Also, Schafer played a key role in creating the Iowa Board of Pharmacy, which created the first real regulation of pharmacy practice in the state. Today his drug store at Living History Farms is a part of the living museum based on the pharmacy practices in 1875. It does a fascinating job at showing some of the evolution behind a pharmacy as time went on. Schafer’s drug store will show visitors for a long time to come what a pharmacist’s job was like in the late 1800s.
These early drugstores were very important to smaller towns for medicines, household chemicals and much more. Druggists during this time were depended on for their abilities to compound medicines for their patients. Several times patients would actually skip visiting their doctor and go straight to the town’s pharmacist. They not only prescribed the medicines, they created them appropriately in mass. An interesting fact about pharmacists (druggists) during this time was that they were less concerned about patenting their medicines and more into patenting what was holding it. Several bottles designs were patented so other druggists’ could not copy them.
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