Our History

History of the MUSC College of Pharmacy

The institution of MUSC pharmacy began in 1881, when the White House was still in its bushy beard era and Thomas Edison had just introduced that new-fangled curiosity, the light bulb.

By 1881, the Medical College of South Carolina (as it was then known) was already a venerable institution, having been chartered in 1823 as the 10th medical school in the United States. Its faculty voted to amend the charter in 1881 to create a Department of Pharmacy.

The department consisted of three pharmacy faculty members (practical pharmacy, chemistry, and materia medica) under the leadership of dean C.F. Panknin, who had just finished a term as president of the Pharmaceutical Association (source: "History of Pharmacy in South Carolina" by Hoch, J. Hampton). For South Carolina, these educators were the first funded faculty positions specific to pharmacy. Other medical faculty also taught pharmaceutical courses and the pharmacy faculty taught medical students materia medica and other courses (source: Interview on May 23, 2017 with Bill Golod, dean of MUSC College of Pharmacy from 1965 to 1994).

This collaboration between two disciplines that had been increasingly separated in practice set a foundation at MUSC for interprofessional education more than 100 years before modern healthcare theory adopted it is as critical component of optimal patient outcomes. It's no accident that today's MUSC pharmacy, situated at the heart of an academic medical center, is a recognized leader in interprofessional education.

The Formative Years

Before the turn of the century, the pharmacy profession still held the vestiges of the two-tier English system of druggists and apothecaries. Druggists were untrained product providers, while apothecaries were qualified by virtue of their education to understand the more complex relationship between the products and the patients. The profession grew in stature by turning to pharmacy education as a distinguishing characteristic of good pharmacy practice. Early colleges of pharmacy were associations of practicing pharmacists who not only educated students but also laid the foundation for professional associations, which would emerge to create and enforce standards (source: "Kremers and Urdang's History of Pharmacy" by Edward Kremers, Glenn Sonnedecker, and George Urdang).

In South Carolina, the relationship was even more direct. An 1833 law had given Medical College of South Carolina trustees and faculty sole rights to grant licenses to state pharmacists, which was amended in 1872 to include trustees and faculty at the University of South Carolina (source: "History of Pharmacy in South Carolina" by Hoch, J. Hampton). Four years later, the Pharmacy Act of 1876 placed that responsibility in the hands of the pharmacy state association, which was chartered three months later.

It was a critical time for pharmacy. In the second half of the century, patent medicines and homeopathy had become increasingly popular as an alternative to the extreme approaches in contemporary patient care. Cathartics, purgatives, the little blue pills that gave Abraham Lincoln mercury poisoning – these treatments gave way to authentic drugs at the birth of the modern pharmaceutical era. MUSC pharmacy was born right along with it.

Just three years after the first students enrolled at the MUSC School of Pharmacy, which had been reorganized and named in 1894, a faculty member covering New Drug Update may have told them about the recent discovery of pure acetylsalicylic acid, one of the first synthetic drugs ever created and subsequently marketed in 1899 under the registered trademark of Aspirin.

The Emergence of MUSC Pharmacy

The overlap between pharmacy faculty and practicing pharmacists was clear from the beginning. When the department was first chartered in 1881, it adopted degree requirements with a commitment to experiential education that is still reflected in MUSC pharmacy 136 years later. Charles Rees, Robert Collins and F. Berkhan, Jr., who together made history by earning MUSC's first Ph.G. (Graduate in Pharmacy) degrees on March 1, 1883, each had worked in a pharmacy for a minimum of three years.

The School of Pharmacy started to grow after its 1894 reorganization. In 1904, it had its first female graduates with Hebe Butler and Jane W. Colson. By 1907, the student body was up to 55. By 1909, four of the eight faculty members were trained as pharmacists, rather than M.D.s. In 1921-22, a new building for pharmacology and physiology provided facilities for expanded laboratory work and by 1925, the Ph.G degree had become a three- year course covering things like business economics, compounding, and manufacturing.

The program leading to a degree of bachelor of science in pharmacy began in 1936. This four-year program replaced the three-year Ph.G degree, in keeping with a national trend in pharmacy education. When the American Council of Pharmaceutical Education (forerunner of today's Accreditation Council of Pharmacy Education) issued its first accredited list in 1940, the MUSC School of Pharmacy was a charter member. MUSC pharmacy has been a standard-setter throughout its history, including when the Class of 1950 became the first pharmacy graduates in the United States to publicly subscribe to an oath for pharmacists.

The Flourishing of MUSC Pharmacy

In the early 1960s, the pharmacy program at MUSC faced a crossroads. It had contracted into a small-size, high-quality program that needed to increase enrollment. When William Golod was appointed as dean of the College, he was the youngest pharmacy college dean in the country. He tapped into that youthful energy and drove all over the state, talking to faculty and students and undergraduate institutions throughout the region. He developed a pipeline of applications, enabling the College to grow strategically and create opportunities for innovation. By the time he retired, having served as dean from 1965- 1993, he was the oldest pharmacy dean in the country. And undoubtedly the longest-tenured.

During those three decades, MUSC pharmacy amassed a startling record of innovation. It appears to be the first pharmacy college in the country to:

• Require a clinical experience for all undergraduate students
• Require that clinical instructors be practitioners
• Develop and utilize a comprehensive computerized patient record system for the community pharmacist – an early 1970s version of the Electronic Patient Record
• Develop a Drug Information Data Base for the practicing pharmacist
• Recognize the need for interdisciplinary training in an ambulatory care setting
• Aid in the implementation of a "Unit Dose" system for an entire teaching hospital
• Provide, and be reimbursed for, a pharmacokinetics dosing service for all patients in the Medical University Hospital
• Offer a comprehensive drug abuse course for law enforcement officers

The College was also the first pharmacy college in the Southeast to have an American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) accredited residency program in hospital pharmacy. This national-recognized residency program was celebrated as one of the nation's largest and oldest programs at its 50th anniversary in 2013.

By 1980-1981, the College stopped offering the entry-level Pharm.D. program and focused exclusively on the post-B.S. Pharm.D. program. The College continued to innovate, launching a nuclear pharmacy program, a nutritional support service, and the Pharmaceutical Development Center, which was supported by the College's largest ever donation of $4.5 million by Michael P. Araneo. The center, with a dual mission of education and production, generated extramural funding through contacts with drug manufacturers.

Today, the College continues to engage with pharmaceutical companies through collaborative research, helping explore industry careers through experiential educational, an industry elective, and helping students find fellowships. The college recently partnered with L'Oreal to create through SkinCeuticals an industry fellowship that was the first of its kind in South Carolina.

Five faculty members, including two SmartState endowed chairs, have their offices and labs in the Drug Discovery Building of the James E. Clyburn Research Center, which also houses the CVS Health Pharmacy Practice Laboratory.

In 2023, the college celebrated the grand opening of a new facility after 80 years in its home on Calhoun Street, the Michael P. Araneo Building. The new facility is located in the heart of campus on the MUSC Horseshoe and features faculty/staff offices, student study spaces, a spectacular lobby, spacious conference rooms, and easy access to the college's Bobby Gene and Barbara Harter Rippy Lecture Hall. The new facility also features:

• A new Center for Clinical Evaluation, Teaching & Simulation (CCET). Each lab has two video cameras and a sound system, which allows proctors to see and hear from a single control room. The rooms are used for training students to counsel patients, Objective Structure Clinical Exams involving real-world role play, and Multiple-Mini Interviews, which measure and test soft skills by creating scenarios
• A dedicated suite of Medication Therapy Management (MTM) rooms. The MTM Center provides students with real world training on how to spot medical safety issues and contraindications through collaboration with the Department of Family Medicine and training through call center and video conferring center

The College of Pharmacy at MUSC takes its place alongside the other MUSC colleges, the MUSC Medical Center, the Fritz Hollings Cancer Center and the Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital as an integral part of one of the nation's top academic medical centers.

MUSC Pharmacy Museum Exhibit

The MUSC College of Pharmacy has partnered with the MUSC Waring Historical Library to relocate the exhibits of the MUSC College of Pharmacy Alumni Association Museum as part of the college’s move from the Michael P. Araneo Building at 280 Calhoun Street to the new pharmacy facility on the MUSC Horseshoe.

In the new pharmacy facility, a large space outside the Dean's Suite has a rotating pharmacy exhibit. The exhibit displays a rotating selection of interesting artifacts culled from the museum’s collection that included a turn of the century workstation and prescriptions, photographs, early reference texts, pill machines, suppository molds, mortars, pestles made of iron, wood, ceramics, and glass, and a variety of antique balances.

Brooke Fox, university archivist and professor, has overseen the cataloging and packaging process of the museum’s materials in the Araneo Building. Many of the museum’s relics will be housed in the Waring Historical Library and/or added to its digital archives.

Contact Us

MUSC Waring Historical Library

Brooke Fox, MUSC University Archivist & Professor
foxeb@musc.edu