(February 20, 2014 – October 2, 2015)

This exhibition celebrated the legacy of John Wyeth (1834–1907), a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, who in 1860 founded, with his brother Frank, a drugstore with a research lab that eventually grew to become the renowned, multinational pharmaceutical corporation, Wyeth.

The over 300 objects on display told a rich story of innovation and keen business acumen. They documented Wyeth’s humble beginnings and steady expansion over the company’s first few decades — a growth due to several key factors: the firm’s improvements to the taste of pharmaceutical products; its preparation of various compounds in advance and in large batches; the securement a government contract during the Civil War; and the invention of a machine for making tablets from medicinal powders, which allowed mass production of pills with pre-measured dosages. Among the “firsts” attributed to Wyeth in these early years are elixirs, compressed tablets, sugar-coated tablets, glycerin suppositories, effervescent salts and soluble gelatin capsules.

The objects in the exhibition illustrated distinct moments in Wyeth’s complex 150-year history, and they consisted of various categories of artifacts: manuscripts (ledgers, letters, records), ephemera, advertisements, prints and photographs, books, periodicals, devices, drug bottles, containers and packaging. These items represented a limited sampling of the large historical archive that Wyeth employees carefully (and proudly) assembled over many years. With the aim of preserving this important collection in perpetuity, Wyeth generously donated their archive to USciences in 2009. 

(March 22, 2012 – May 31, 2013)

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This exhibition was a historical survey of prints — primarily woodcuts, engravings and lithographs — used in book illustration from about 1480 to about 1965. It included notable loans from the USciences Rare Book Collection, which was rich in illustrated herbals and titles related to the practice and history of pharmacy. A highlight of these holdings is Vegetable materia medica of the United States (first published in 1818) by renowned 19th-century botanist W.P.C. Barton; the University owned, remarkably, twenty original copper engraving plates used to create the illustrations in this text, two of which were on display here, alongside the hand-colored prints produced from them. Rounding out the selections was a diverse assemblage of more than 60 book illustrations spanning five centuries; most were loans from private collectors, and they marked the first appearance on campus of original graphic art by acknowledged giants of Modernism such as Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Chagall, Gauguin and Miró.

It is notable that the great majority of book illustrations — including the herbals and anatomical prints that were on view in the exhibition — served the needs of an employer or specialized community, and these pictures therefore came into existence as conveyors of information or opinion rather than as expressions of an illustrator’s personality or as works of art. This fact, however, has not precluded modern specialists from designating the finest of these printing and illustrating ventures as artistic tours de force. 

The art of engraving or incising into metal dates to antiquity, but the idea of using engraved plates to create prints can be traced to goldsmiths in 15th-century Germany. Various prominent German and Italian renaissance artists produced designs for woodcuts and engravings, among which Dürer is perhaps best known. (It is still hotly debated whether or not Dürer cut some of his own blocks before the guild of form cutters had become officially entrenched in 1498, and before increasingly large commissions made professional help necessary.) The additional example of Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) — best known for his Primavera and Birth of Venus — who designed engraved illustrations for a 1481 edition of Dante’s Inferno, demonstrates that major Renaissance painters (with no loss to their egos) were commonly engaged in creating designs for the so-called "minor" arts such as metalwork, ceramics, and books. By the early 17th century, engraving had ousted woodcut as the preferred method of book illustration in Europe. 

Writing about the social importance of print techniques, William Ivins Jr, Curator of Prints of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, observed in 1943:

It can be reasonably argued that the great event of the fifteenth century was not the rediscovery of Greek or any other sort of ancient learning, but the discovery of mechanical ways to make pictorial records in duplicate, exactly, cheaply, and in vast quantities. This discovery made it possible for the first time to make pictorial statements and records in exact duplicates and to distribute them in invariant visual form simultaneously to many different people in many different places. The importance of this to human society can hardly be overstated. It has possibly had greater effects than any mechanical discovery since the invention of writing, as it is basic not only to our knowledge of the past and the present, but to a very large number of our modern technological and scientific developments.

One could persuasively argue that from the time of their invention the electric photocopier, printer, personal computer, and the internet have had a greater and more pervasive effect on the dissemination of knowledge and images than traditional printmaking methods; but for the 500 or so years leading up to those landmark developments, and in an ever-increasingly visual culture, the print reigned supreme, for it brought to life the worlds of ideas and imagination presented in a wide variety of scientific, literary, and artistic texts. 

(November 11, 2009 – May 27, 2011)

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A Latin phrase literally meaning “according to the art or practice,” secundum artem often refers to doing something in the accepted manner of a skill or trade. In medicine, it can mean “employing skill and judgment” or “to make favorably with skill." In pharmacy, preparations made secundum artem ensure they are pure and unadulterated, but the phrase also encompasses the apothecary’s obligation to provide good advice to customers who request over the counter drugs.

Through the display of over ­­100 objects related to the history of pharmacy and science, this exhibition explored the products of various skilled scientists, artists, craftsmen and designers active primarily in Europe and the United States during the last 300 years. What links these objects is that they were manufactured according to the specific art or practice, or secundum artem, of their makers. The wide media — prints, photographs, manuscripts, paintings, ceramics, glass, wood and metal — and categories of objects — instruments, advertising and packaging, natural science, etc. — attest to the broad holdings of the Marvin Samson Center for the History of Pharmacy. In each instance, an object was conceived with a particular function in mind, which ranged from the purely utilitarian to the purely decorative, but very often with the boundary between the two being blurred.

Frequently an object’s elegant design or the addition of applied decoration is sufficient to elevate it to the status of veritable art object. The 1930s Remington typewriter that was on display in the gallery is an example of the former: a well-thought-out and restrained form in keeping with the philosophy expressed by Camillo Olivetti, a designer at one of Remington’s competing firms, who remarked “a typewriter should not be a gewgaw for the drawing room, ornate or in questionable taste. It should have an appearance that is serious and elegant at the same time.” At the other end of the spectrum is the pair of late-17th-century Italian blue-and-white ceramic apothecary jars. Ostensibly made as containers for the drugs named on their labels (theriaca and hyacinth), their large, bold form (with twisted snake handles) and finely-painted decoration eclipse their utilitarian function and thus distinguish them as notable works of ceramic art. 

The significance of a sizable group of objects in the exhibition lies with their didactic function. For example, the twelve late-19th-century German botanical panels displayed in the galley niches were produced as teaching aids, but their appeal and interest today as artistic prints is undeniable. In a similar way, our interest in crystal and rock specimens and in animal skeletons goes beyond their classification as, respectively, accidental products of geologic activity or products of evolutionary biology: They are examples of nature as art and as good design. 

To be sure, many of the innovative art movements of the 20th century resulted in a redefining or broadening of what constitutes “art.” (One need only think of Marcel Duchamp’s Dadaist “ready mades” of the 1910s, Jackson Pollack’s drip paintings of the 1950s, or Andy Warhol’s Pop Art creations of the 1960s and 70s.) Visitors to this exhibition were invited to view in new light a series of diverse artifacts made secundum artem and (primarily) for utilitarian purposes, to discover how, beyond their value as historical documents, such products of creative minds relate and compare to standard and accepted concepts of the art object. What makes an object beautiful? How can design transcend function?

(April 29, 2008 – September 29, 2008)

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Frederick Gutekunst, the son of a German émigré cabinetmaker, was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia in 1831. From age 12 to 18, at his father’s urging, he apprenticed in the law office of Joseph Simon Cohen, prothonotary to the Supreme Court. Law proved so “dry and uninteresting” to Frederick that — as he recounted later in life — he would spend the majority of his dinner allowance on materials to carry out experiments in physics and chemistry. It was around this time that he developed an interest in photography, a new and burgeoning art form that would eventually make him famous. (As if somehow a portent of his natural talent, the name “Gutekunst” translates from the German as “good art.”)

In his early teens Frederick was a frequent (volunteer) sitter at the daguerreotype gallery of Marcus Aurelius Root, who was among the earliest photographers in America; however, Frederick learned the craft of daguerreotyping from Robert Cornelius, founder, in 1840, of Philadelphia’s first photographic studio. Although not its originator, Frederick succeeded in the chemical process that converted the unique daguerreotype image into a printable electrotype (intaglio) plate; the results were promising, but not good enough to pursue commercially. Frederick’s talent for chemistry did not go unnoticed by his father, who apprenticed him, from age 18, to the druggist Frederick Klett, which soon set him on a path to Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (PCP). It is perhaps no coincidence that Cornelius studied chemistry with Gerard Troost, PCP’s first chemistry professor.

In 1853, after a four-year apprenticeship with Klett, the last two of which included simultaneous matriculation at PCP, Frederick graduated with a thesis titled "History of electro-metallurgy and its application to pharmacy." As Frederick progressed towards a pharmacy career, he also began experimenting with his first camera, which consisted of a five-dollar lens he added to a box built by his father. In October of that same year, at age 22, he entered his first photography contest at the 23rd Exhibition of American Manufacturers at the Franklin Institute for the Promotion of Mechanical Arts.

For the next two years Frederick worked in the Market Street drug store of Avery Tobey, a fellow PCP alumnus. Meanwhile, Frederick’s interest in photography grew even stronger through the encouragement of his younger brother Louis, a barber, with whose financial support Frederick opened, in 1856, the “Gutekunst & Brother” photography studio at 706 Arch Street. Their partnership lasted until 1860, when Louis resumed his former work.

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 and Philadelphia’s importance as an economic, industrial and military center turned Gutekunst’s studio into a major photography destination, particularly for portraiture. In 1866, the business moved several doors down to 712 Arch Street, and Frederick spared no expense turning the larger space into a “temple of beauty and grandeur.” As one newspaper columnist wrote in a 1913 profile about him: “There was hardly a busier man in
Philadelphia than Mr. Gutekunst. As the troops tramped through the city, thousands of men flocked to his Arch Street studio to procure a likeness to send back to loved ones left behind, and many times those curious little prints were, and still are, the only pictures of tangible kind of this or that boy who marched away from home in Federal blue. The generals came, Grant and Meade and Sheridan while, as his reputation spread, the most prominent figures in other walks of life
more and more frequented the photographer’s studio.”

Gutekunst was a favorite photographer of the elite of the period, and his sitters included Walt Whitman, Ulysses S. Grant, Lucretia Mott, Thomas Eakins, A. J. Drexel, John D. Lankenau and Woodrow Wilson. The nine national and international exhibitions the studio participated in between 1865 and 1876 garnered it gifts, medals, and awards, all of which helped secure for Gutekunst a name beyond the United States. One of the studio’s most celebrated images is an impressive technical feat: a ten-foot long panoramic view of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, which at its unveiling in 1876 was described as the largest photograph in the world. (One of several rare surviving original imprints of this subject was on view in this gallery.)

Throughout his more than 60-year career Gutekunst maintained close ties with PCP. He was an active member of the Alumni Association, a significant donor, and his photographs appeared regularly in PCP publications. Assembled in several albums still owned by USP (two of which were on display in this gallery) are dozens of photos of PCP graduates, officers, and trustees that bear the Gutekunst studio stamp. At Gutekunst’s death in 1917 the American Journal of
Pharmacy published a three-page obituary, and the PCP Board of Trustees issued the following resolution to memorialize him:

Whereas the membership of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy has suffered a severe loss by the death of Frederick Gutekunst, one of the oldest graduates, and an honorary member of the College, and whereas the membership of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy wishes to express
sorrow in the loss of an esteemed and beloved member who by his long and eventful life, devoted to the Art of Photography, won the title of ‘Dean of American Photographers.’

Be it resolved that in the death of Frederick Gutekunst the membership of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy has lost one of its most distinguished associates who endeared himself by his many gifts of portraits of living, and reproductions of portraits of deceased officers and members, and by his life-
long interest in all affairs of the Institution; also that by his skill in his Chosen Art he has inspired many others to attain the same perfection of work that was so characteristic of him, and thereby elevated the Art of Photography to so high a plane that his name will ever be an inspiration to those that follow his footsteps.

(July 20, 2006 – September 28,  2007)

The first half of the 19th century is a particularly remarkable time in the history of the United States. For much of that period, the nation was a loose association of scattered states bordered by a vast wilderness to the west and miles of ocean to its east. On the political front, America fought the English in the War of 1812 — deemed our country’s “second war of independence” — only to be internally dissevered by the Civil War, starting in 1861; in between there were a handful of smaller but highly consequential territorial wars, mostly in the southern and southwestern portions of the nation.

As many of the objects that were in this exhibition attest, there was a constant exchange of ideas between artists designing in the fine arts (e.g., prints, painting, architecture) and those active in the applied arts (e.g., furniture, glass, metalwork, ceramics). Philadelphia was given special attention in the displays in part because it was the largest city, financial center, and major port in the country until around 1830, when that distinction passed to New York. But more importantly, for the period covered by the exhibition, Philadelphia was a city of firsts and of innovation and, in many respects, the vanguard of art, culture, politics and education for the fledgling republic. 

(April 22 – July 21, 2005)

Frank Henry Netter (1906–1991) studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students’ League, and by the mid-1920s, he was a successful commercial artist for publications such as The Saturday Evening Post and The New York Times. At his mother’s urging to follow a more "serious" career, he entered medical school at New York University, where he received his M.D. degree in 1931. During his student years, Netter’s notebook sketches caught the attention of various medical professors, allowing him to supplement his income by illustrating lectures, articles and textbooks. In private surgical practice he accepted art commissions, but eventually this artist-cum-surgeon gave up his medical practice altogether, in favor of a full-time commitment to art. The result was Netter’s legendary ability to comprehend thoroughly as a physician before liberating the potent creative forces of the artist.

As an army officer in WWII, he illustrated several manuals on first-aid for combat troops, sanitation in the field and survival in the tropics. In the late 1930s, shortly before his military duty, he had already begun a rewarding and prolific 45-year partnership with the Ciba Pharmaceutical Company (later Ciba-Geigy, which in 1996 became Novartis), which resulted in thousands of designs for the serial Clinical Symposia and what has become his opus magnum, The Ciba Collection of Medical Illustrations (13 volumes). The latter illustrates the most important systems and diseases of the body in painstaking, brilliant detail and remains one of the most famous medical works ever produced. Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, first published in 1989 (and translated into eleven languages) presents anatomical paintings largely culled from The Ciba Collection and is currently the anatomy atlas of choice among medical and health professionals the world over. Nearly all the original works in the current exhibition originate from these published sources. 

“I try to depict living patients whenever possible. After all, physicians do see patients, and we must remember we are treating whole human beings.” 

– Frank H. Netter, M.D.  

Although created for their intellectual content, Netter’s paintings are appreciated for their aesthetic qualities, such as their ability to depict the functionality of organs in a strikingly animated manner. Although the study of anatomy dates to the ancient Egyptians, the art of medical illustration did not truly emerge until the Renaissance, when artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo created drawings based on cadaveric dissections. The stringent clarity, stunning accuracy and beauty of the works of this ‘"Michelangelo of Medicine" — as a 1976 Saturday Evening Post article described Netter — follow solidly in the tradition of this marriage of science and art.  

One of the most important blends of this tradition occurred in the 16th century, with the publication of De Humani Corporis Fabrica in 1543. A collaboration between the anatomist-physician Andreas Vesalius and the artist Jan Stefan van Kalkar of Flanders, De Fabrica was the standard anatomy atlas for centuries, to be enhanced or supplanted only when technological discoveries (such as the invention of the compound microscope in the 17th century, or the discovery of X-rays in the 19th century) revealed new knowledge about human anatomy. In the spirit of collaboration, it is useful to recall that although a physician/surgeon himself, Netter consulted dozens of medical experts throughout his career as he conceptualized his paintings. This is especially true for design projects documenting new discoveries in medicine, such as computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanners, joint replacements and the first artificial heart transplant.

“[My work] deals with the most humanistic, the most soul-searching of subjects...people break bones, develop painful or swollen joints, are handicapped...some are beset by tumors or undergo amputations. These are people we see about quite commonly and are often our friends, relatives, or acquaintances.” 

– Frank H. Netter, M.D. 

Always drawn to the complexity and diversity of people, Netter strived to create faces and bodies in his work that mirrored their individual personalities. The result was that disease and trauma are viewed humanely, that is, as a complex life challenge faced by people rather than an isolated intellectual puzzle. Netter’s sense of humanity and empathy for patients is one of the most distinguishing features of his paintings; as he said, “I always tried to make [the subject] look like a living patient, with proper facial expression and so forth, to show that this is not a machine we are dealing with. We’re not repairing a television set when we’re treating these patients.”

Netter spent far more time researching a subject and planning an illustration than in executing it. After absorbing from a multitude of sources as much information as necessary, he typically created pencil sketches, which were then copied and transformed into finished designs in gouache — a watercolor technique — to which he often added opaque paints, colored pencils or pastels, for shading and fine detail. Nearly half of the works in the current exhibition appear with their Mylar overlays which contain text and additional graphics that supplemented or completed the paintings in their final, printed form. 

(December 9, 2004 – December 2, 2005)

The venue for this private exhibition was Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. This exhibition featured a selection of some of the most interesting mortar and pestle sets from the museum's collections. With thirty-one examples from over a dozen countries, and in materials such as stone, metal, wood, glass, ceramic and ivory, the exhibition attested to the astounding diversity these objects have displayed over the past 450 years. 

Of all the articles comprising the pharmacist's armamentarium, mortars and pestles hold a place of honor as the indispensable, and therefore most characteristic tools of the profession. Since written history began, their association with pharmacy has been so intimate that they have become emblematic of the apothecary's art. They were probably the earliest implements used in the practice of pharmacy and medicine as well as in the preparation of food by primitive man. The antiquity of these devices is well documented in early writings, such as the Egyptian "Papyrus Ebers" of c. 1550 B.C.E. (the oldest preserved medical manuscript) and the Old Testament (Numbers 11:8 and Proverbs 27:22).

Whether improvised from nature to be used primarily as grinding stones or designed, fabricated, and decorated to a degree that merits status as veritable art objects, mortars are found in every corner of the earth. Their users include members of isolated tribes, professional and household cooks, students, scientists and pharmacists. At least two mortars on display have specialized functions in food preparation: the Mexican example, formed from volcanic rock, whose rough composition excels at cutting and grinding chili or red pepper; and the highly decorative Near Eastern wooden example, with a tall and narrow inner cavity specifically designed for crushing coffee beans. The centerpiece of the exhibition, a large brass mortar dated 1767, bears the imperial monogram of Frederick the Great, and was almost certainly used by the king's personal apothecary.

(October 2001 – March 14, 2005)

Did you know that in 1892, herbal remedies such as St. John's wort, saw palmetto and valer­ian were used? In the year 2000, these same remedies were among the top ten best sellers. What explains this staying power? What constitutes "alternative" medical treatment? How do treatments outside the realm of physician-directed programs gain acceptance in "mainstream" medicine? 

How does culture influence health care? Medical systems such as traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic and folk medicine offer very different cultural views of medicine. By using an approach that integrates lifestyle and health, these systems offer us an alternative view of therapeutics. 

This exhibition addressed these issues in a journey through the history and development of unorthodox medical treatment. From bloodlet­ting with leeches to healing with plants, the exhibit examined the historical use of "alternative" therapeutics, the evolution of complementary treatments, specific types of treatment and the extensive amount of research being conducted today. 

Think that the current craze for health and fitness is new? Take a look at some of the popular magazines from another era: an 1886 ad touts Gettysburg Spring Co. Kata lysine water, a 1910 cover of Physical Culture Magazine boasts a "Turkish bath in your home.”

Included in the exhibition were sections on:

• Historical perspectives of Integrative medicine and the use of "botanical drugs," including herbal specimens, advertisements and products
• Alternative movements developed in the 19th century such as Thomsonian Botanics, hydropathy, naturopathy, eclecticism, chiropractic, osteopathy, homeopathy and physical culture.
• Traditional systems of medicine such as Chinese, Ayurvedic and folk medicine
• Food therapeutics, including nutraceuticals, "super" foods and supplementation

(Ended Spring 2001)

The exhibition exemplified the importance of the USP's role in the formation of pharmacy as a profession. The exhibition contained artifacts and documents relating to the University's long history of influence on the field of pharmacy; the founding of Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.

It included:

• A timeline, "Behind and Over the Counter," of pharmaceutical development from 1821 (the date of Philadelphia College of Pharmacy's inception) to the present
• Famous alumni of the University such as Eli Lilly, Josiah K. Lilly, Gerald F. Rorer, William R. Warner, Robert McNeil, John Wyeth, Silas M. Burroughs and Sire Henry S. Wellcome, who have vastly contributed to the evolution of American pharmacy
• The development and changes affecting education in the health sciences
• The influence and development of pharmaceutical related industries in Philadelphia
• Patent medicine