In 1816 the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania established a Faculty of Natural Sciences, and “Dr. James Mease was granted permission to open a regular course of lectures on pharmacy” which he had done for 2-3 years.  By 1819 “the Board of Trustees resolved that the teaching of the pharmaceutical art should be a part of the duties of the professor of materia medica and pharmacy, and that a course of lectures be established intended for pharmaceutical students”.

Following a proposal by Dr. John Redman Coxe, a medical school professor of chemistry, on February 6, 1821 the University Trustees passed a resolution to institute a Degree of Master of Pharmacy, from this the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy was established, the first of it’s kind. [1]  After meeting with the druggists and apothecaries who were concerned this change would “diminish the number of apothecaries, and the profits of those who remained would be increased”. [2]

In 1817 Dr. Lyman Spalding submitted a proposal to a NY Medical Society for a national work to be prepared and published by the medical societies and schools of the United State, from this the Pharmacopoeia 1820 was eventually established.

On March 27, 1821 the Trustees held their first meeting and elected the board of trustees for School of Pharmacy.  Local philanthropist Daniel B. Smith was elected secretary, he would play a large role in the college.

On March 31, 1848 the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy adopted that a Code of Ethics be established.

“Pharmacy being a profession which demands knowledge, skill and integrity on the part of those engaged in it, and being associated with the medical profession in the responsible duties of preserving the public health, and dispensing the useful though often dangerous agents adapted to the cure of disease, its members should be united on some general principles to be observed in their several relations to each other, to the medical profession, and to the public.”

In December 1825 the Journal of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy began to publish the advances in the pharmaceutical sciences.

The New York College of Pharmacy was established in 1829 in the heart of where imported drugs came into the country.  They were active in getting the Import Drugs Act 1848 passed, to prevent the shipment of adulterated drugs and chemicals into the country.  This helped protect the quality of the drug prescribed by the allopathic physician.

“In 1900 this code of ethics was somewhat modified to meet the modern conditions of pharmaceutical practice”, as was the medical code of ethics around the same time.

Philadelphia is the home of Pharmacy in the US and a city with an alarming death spike in the 1918 pandemic!