University of Puerto Rico - School of Pharmacy: one hundred years of history and service.

The University of Puerto Rico School of Pharmacy was initially established as the Department of Pharmacy at the Río Piedras Campus on September 22, 1913, being the first healthcare program founded in Puerto Rico. The history of the School of Pharmacy reveals a remarkable evolution over a 100 years period in order to respond to the patients' and societal needs. The programs offered by the school have adapted to the wealth of scientific knowledge, emerging technologies, patients' needs and changes in the healthcare system. This historical note highlights the most important milestones of this centennial institution.

Reading baby books: medicine, marketing, money and the lives of American infants.

This article examines American baby books from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century. Baby books are ephemeral publications­formatted with one or more printed pages for recording developmental, health, and social information about infants and often including personal observations, artifacts such as photographs or palm prints, medical and other prescriptive advice, and advertisements. For historians they serve as records of the changing social and cultural worlds of infancy, offering insights into the interplay of childrearing practices and larger social movements.Baby books are a significant historical source both challenging and supporting current historiography, and they illustrate how medical, market and cultural forces shaped the ways babies were cared for and in turn how their won behavior shaped family lives. A typology of baby books includes the lavishly illustrated keepsake books of the late nineteenth century, commercial and public health books of the twentieth century, and on-line records of the present day. Themes that emerge over time include those of scientific medicine and infant psychology, religion and consumerism. The article relies on secondary literature and on archival sources including the collections of the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library as well as privately held baby books.

The new Food and Drug Administration drug package insert: implications for patient safety and clinical care.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the scientific, regulatory, and public health agency that regulates many products, including food products, drugs, medical devices, radiation emitting devices, and cosmetics for the federal government of the United States. The FDA's mission is to assure that consumer products made and sold in the United States are safe, effective, and pure. The purpose of the package insert (also known as prescription drug product insert or professional labeling) is to provide detailed drug information compiled and distributed by the drug manufacturer, after FDA review and approval. In 2006, the standard format for the package insert was changed in an attempt to make it more user-friendly and a more efficient resource tool for practitioners. According to the Institute of Medicine, in-hospital adverse drug reactions occur at a rate of 400,000 per year and incur $3.5 billion of extra hospital expense. It is expected that the new package insert format will enhance rapid access to important pharmacologic information and improve patient safety by decreasing medication errors.

La primera botica de los hospitales de la ciudad de Lima en el siglo XVI

El autor hace una reseña detallada sobre los primeros hospitales establecidos en la Ciudad de lo Reyes de Lima, a partir de 1549; y en especial un comentario sobre la primera botica recibida en 1551 para dichos hospitales, junto con el contrato de compañía para su funcionamiento (AU)

[A short history of patient package insert in the EU].

In recent years the Japanese general public has become increasingly aware of health matters, and many people wish to know more about the medicines they receive from doctors. This means that Japanese patients have not been given medicinal product information fully by medical professionals, whereas many European countries have already introduced patient package inserts (PPIs) with near full disclosure leaflets in understandable language in all packages of dispensed medications. This article describes a short history of PPIs in European countries, centering on the development of PPIs in Germany and Belgium. It is expected that these European experiences contribute to our country in terms of providing patients with pharmaceutical information.

[Pharmaceutical information activities].

This paper reviewed the progress of the pharmaceutical information activities after the war during fifty years. Activities of the pharmaceutical information organizations, progress of pharmaceutical information tools and techniques, the pharmaceutical information education in universities are described.

Louis Gdalman, pioneer in hospital pharmacy poison information services.

The role played by hospital pharmacist Louis Gdalman in the development of poisoning information services in the Chicago area is described. In the 1930s, decades before the creation of the Chicago Poisoning Control Program, Louis Gdalman had already established a poison information service at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago. Pharmacists provided poison information to the physicians and nurses working in the emergency room. By the early 1950s, Gdalman had established an extensive library of information on the management of acute and chronic poisoning and had developed a standard form for the collection of data from poison information calls. He personally provided a 24-hour poison information service and often took calls at home. In 1953, the American Academy of Pediatrics initiated the Chicago Area Poisoning Control Program and established treatment and referral centers at 11 hospitals, including St. Luke's Hospital. Louis Gdalman was the only pharmacist involved in this city-wide program. By 1962, the Master Poison Control Center was established at St. Luke's Hospital, which had merged with Presbyterian Hospital in 1956. Today, this center, known as the Chicago and Northeastern Illinois Regional Poison Control Center, is located at the Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. Louis Gdalman, a hospital pharmacist, pioneered the area of poison information and established what was perhaps the first hospital-based comprehensive poison control center.

[The medicine chest of Roald Amundsen in 1914]. / Roald Amundsens medisinkiste anno 1914.

This historical medicine chest evidently has not been used, and its contents are nearly complete. Practically all medicines for internal use were dispensed in tablet form, which was very advanced for that time. The chest also contains a manual with short descriptions of illnesses and injuries and how to treat them, accompanied by an inventory. The medicine chest and accompanying booklet were compiled in a systematic way for easy access, and provide an interesting review of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge at that time. Many of the compounds are in surprisingly good condition after 75 years. Some of them have been analysed for active ingredients, and were shown to contain from 0 to 79% of the declared content. The composition of the medicine chest is based on 19th century traditions for ships' equipment, but compared with a 20 years older specimen it seems advanced. The medicine chest is located in Roald Amundsen's Home at Svartskog near Oslo.