My Pharmacy History Blog

I was browsing through some old copies of Forum that I had scanned during my last visit to South Africa, looking for something in particular. I came across this report in the June 1982 issue of FORUM, and I thought members of FORUM and the PSSA would find it interesting. Posting it on my blog seemed to be the easiest and quickest way  for it to reach those pharmacists who would be interested. I already have a pharmacy blog and a travel blog, so I set about creating a Pharmacy History Blog.  I think it is necessary that members of a profession keep in touch with the work that was done by those who preceded them, and that those crusaders not be forgotten. Women, for example, should also not forget that having the vote was not achieved without a difficult battle being fought and eventually won as recently as just over one hundred years ago.

For the benefit of younger readers I need to point out that pre 1994, each of the four provinces had their own provincial health departments and State hospitals were also to be found within the provinces. Promotion posts were limited and promotion was based on merit assessments. Many times a promotion was possible only by applying for a post in a rural hospital.

The first issues of FORUM were typed and reproduced, and stapled together, before finally being placed into envelopes for posting to members.  I own a copy of almost every issue from the first one in 1976 up to when FORUM was incorporated into the South African Pharmaceutical Journal. While I was in South Africa at the beginning of this year, my scanner worked overtime while I scanned pages I thought would be useful for my purpose. These are in pdf format, and I have subscribed to the feature that allows me to convert these files into a word document. Unfortunately the original pages are not always clearly printed so the converted files show gibberish in places. The result is that many of the paragraphs require almost complete retyping. But I am learning as I go along.