Page 4 - Pharmacy History 31 Mar 2007

(Cont. from page 3)
This is a must have reference for all pharmacists, and to conclude this review listen to a past student reminiscing about his alma mater.
Reed summed up the changes he has witnessed, and helped achieve, since he first entered the old college in Swanston Street as a student in 1959. Then, pharmacy was a small, sheltered profession run by pharmacists. It had a `college the pharmacists themselves ran, which didn’t offer a degree and probably didn’t offer a diploma whereas today the biggest of the drug companies will often come to people at the college with problems that no one else can solve. So, in my lifetime, I’ve seen the Victorian College of Pharmacy going from a private, little, Dickensian college to a very respected research institute and I’ve seen the practice of pharmacy go from being subservient to the practice of medicine, preparing things with doubtful efficacy and doubtful stability
and not being able to talk to patients about them...
to being an information profession... equal with any other. For 125 years, dedicated people associated with the College, the Society and the Board in Victoria have worked to raise the standard of pharmacy education and professional practice in community, hospital and
industrial pharmacy. The Victorian College of Pharmacy can be proud of what has been achieved while looking forward to an exciting future.
Dum vivimus,vivamus (While we live, let us enjoy life)
Pharmacists practising as dentists
CWomment by Geoff Miller
hen Australia was first settled many of those who practised as dentists had no medical background at all. Early records indicate that
tooth pulling was conducted by barbers, blacksmiths and even horse farriers. Many pharmacists also provided dental services as a sideline and assigned a portion of their shop to perform tooth extractions and cupping.
In all of the Australian states, dental registration boards were gradually introduced by law and they functioned like the Medical Board and the Pharmacy Board (The Pharmaceutical Council in W.A.).
Pharmacists who had been practising dentistry, had to be able to show that they had been properly trained and were required to sit for an examination prior to being registered. In Western Australia, the very first applicant for registration as a dentist was James Tunnock, who was already a practising pharmacist. He was required by the Dental Board to provide an affidavit to show that he had served as an apprentice in dentistry for four years. He was subsequently examined and registered in 1896, thus becoming the first pharmacist to qualify as a dentist in WA.
Tunnock practised in rooms in Perth, but he became a thorn in the side of the Dental Board which expressed its displeasure at his use of the letters D.D.S. (Doctor
of Dental Surgery) after his name, which they said was misleading.
Tunnock soon saw greener pastures in the eastern states, and he moved there to establish what he called The Interstate Dental College, and he even wrote a textbook for his students.
1Stockwell R.F. The origins of the Dental profession in Western Australia. Original Document, no publisher. 1963
“Oops! How odd! There’s nothing wrong with this tooth. I’d better try again!”
4 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 3 ■ no 31 ■ MARCH 2007