College of Pharmacy

History of Pharmacy

33

33. WRESTING THE JUNGLE'S SECRETS

Expeditions in search of new medicinal plants probably are as old as Pharmacy. Scientific adventurers, such as Henry Hurd Rusby (1855-1940), opened vast new horizons for the advancement of Pharmacy and Medicine, late in the nineteenth century. Sent by Parke, Davis & Company in 1884 to Peru for supplies of coca leaves, Dr. Rusby crossed the Andes and journeyed down the Amazon to the Atlantic amid incredible hardships. He returned with 45,000 botanical specimens. Among them were many new drug plants, including cocillana bark, pharmaceutical preparations of which are still important to Medicine. Dr. Rusby later became Dean of the College of Pharmacy of Columbia University.

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