- Joined
- Jan 13, 2006
- Messages
- 158
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Yesterday I was at my internship at a compounding pharmacy when our electricity went out b/c of the storm in northern CA. We were left w/out being able to look up pt info in the system, print labels, search formularies, use the digital balances, etc. and the phones were down too. It's amazing how helpless we felt w/out modern technology.
After doing some Spring cleaning a little early I helped one of the pharmacists finish a tetracycline capsule compound for this lady's cat that she really wanted to pick up that afternoon. One of the techs found an old torsion balance and a couple small wooden boxes with apothecary and metric weights that I used to measure out the powders, weight of the capsules (empty and full), etc. It wasn't a huge deal or anything, but I found it so fascinating to use equipment from a generation ago. Last time I read an article about what pharmacy was like in the 19th century I couldn't stop telling my wife how interesting it must have been to practice in those days. She tells me I was born in the wrong century (for other reasons as well), but I think pharmacy history and how things were done years ago is so cool. This profession just gets better with each passing day. It's like so many other fine things that just get better with age.
After doing some Spring cleaning a little early I helped one of the pharmacists finish a tetracycline capsule compound for this lady's cat that she really wanted to pick up that afternoon. One of the techs found an old torsion balance and a couple small wooden boxes with apothecary and metric weights that I used to measure out the powders, weight of the capsules (empty and full), etc. It wasn't a huge deal or anything, but I found it so fascinating to use equipment from a generation ago. Last time I read an article about what pharmacy was like in the 19th century I couldn't stop telling my wife how interesting it must have been to practice in those days. She tells me I was born in the wrong century (for other reasons as well), but I think pharmacy history and how things were done years ago is so cool. This profession just gets better with each passing day. It's like so many other fine things that just get better with age.