ABSTRACT
How did pharmacy education change over the centuries? How did pharmacy education shape the pharmacy profession?
Since medieval times, apothecaries learned their art at the side of a preceptor while serving various terms of apprenticeship in hopes of becoming a master in a European guild and opening their own shops. With the rapid scientific advancements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in alkaloid chemistry, several European nations instituted formal programs of instruction for apothecaries usually in conjunction with medical educators. The German states influenced by the traditions of Frederick II’s Constitutiones (c.1240) developed private pharmaceutical teaching institutes in the late eighteenth century that taught subjects in the basic sciences to supplement the practical experience gained in apprenticeships.1
