Pharmacists and Drug Store Clerks Were Essential When the Spanish Flu Hit

As the Spanish Flu caused death and havoc across Cecil County in 1918, essential workers toiled away day and night, struggling to alleviate the suffering.  In this troop of people delivering critical services, doctors and nurses stood on the front line.  Alongside these bedside caregivers, the druggists played an equally essential role as the virus ripped unchecked across Maryland. 

These early 20th-century flu fighters, from every corner of the county, toiled away as the cases multiplied, providing vitally needed medications.  Antiseptics by the gallon, atomizers by the dozens, and countless vials of patent medicines, passed over drug store counters.  But the most significant contribution from this army of professional pharmacists was filling doctor’s prescriptions.

As frightened people staggered into drug stores with the physician’s script, exhausted druggists stood for long hours at their workbenches wielding the pestle and mortar.  They poured, measured, ground, and compounded chemicals incessantly, dispensing prescriptions to alleviate the misery. 

Medications for Fighting the Flu

Druggists, even the old hands, had never experienced anything like this.  But alongside their clerks, they worked night and day formulating medications, counting pills, and providing supplies for those down with the virus.

When the contagion crypt into Cecil County in 1918, the physicians in this lethal battle had no curative treatments — without vaccines or antibiotics, they experimented, prescribing drugs to control cough and relieve pain, alongside various treatments previously used for respiratory diseases.  The regimens available in 1918 included morphine for pain, quinine for malaria, digitalis for heart conditions, phenacetin for fever reduction, and morphine, ether, and chloroform for anesthetics.¹

Frantic customers also stripped laxatives from the shelves.  They were ordered as a cure for everything in those days.    There were also general medicines for symptomatic treatment such as aspirin, calomel, and castor oil, and kidney pills with opium. 

Antiseptics sold like never before.  Listerine, peroxide, and a dozen other sanitizers and mouthwashes disappeared quickly from the inventory.    

Desperate people also turned to a variety of additional patent medicines, which were available from an assortment of retailers as manufacturers boasted of the curative powers of these concoctions in newspaper advertisements.  Laced with alcohol and narcotics, the distributors touted the benefits of alcohol, tobacco, camphor, quinine, and much more.  They simply added Spanish Influenza to the ills they purported to prevent treat or cure. 

Some across-the-counter treatments provided symptom relief.  Vicks VapoRub, for example, became widely popular.  As sales skyrocketed, pharmacists were asked to conserve stock as it was needed “in the flu districts.”   

Pharmacists Should Receive Military Deferments

That October, Dr. A. R. L. Dohme of Baltimore wrote to the Surgeon General, asking that the government recognize the pharmacy trade as an essential industry and give pharmacists and drug clerks military deferments.  Many of these men were being drafted by the army, while drugstores were being overrun with prescriptions and the remaining clerks couldn’t handle the volume, many working all night and day.  Maintaining “professional pharmaceutical services” were essential so people could secure their medicines. . . . It was one of the direct needs of the public and the medical profession to help defeat the epidemic and save lives,” he wrote. ²

As that sorrowful October faded into November, the nervous tension in the shops eased as druggists got their first break from dispensing influenza remedies and sick room supplies in weeks.  Standing in their shops, they could say they had done their part to combat the pandemic that brought Cecil County to a standstill as they provided victims of the contagion with vitally needed medicines.   

Cecil County’s pharmacists had been up to the unparalleled task of serving with doctors and nurses on the front line of the healthcare system, as the contagion ran its course here.   These professionals, some of the busiest men in the county during some of the county’s most trying weeks in history, made it possible for victims of the virus to have vitally needed medications.  To do this they labored for long, extended days, some working at their counters for as much as 20-hours a day while also facing the risk of infection.  When the pandemic of 1918 struck Cecil County the pharmacists had alleviated suffering and hardship while saving lives.      

Notes on Some of Cecil County’s Druggists

Here is a list of the druggists in Cecil County in 1916, along with a few additional notes on some of them. ³

CECILTON — Black, John H.

CHESAPEAKE CITY — Sawtelle, Seth S. and Smithers, Dedman S.

ELKTON — Frazer, J. Frank, Fraser, Robert B.. and Wells Drug Store

In 1869, Dr. James H. Frazer established the Elkton Drug Store on East Main Street. Later he sold the business to his brother Robert F. Frazer.⁴

NORTH EAST — McKnight, V. H.. and Moore’s Pharmacy

PORT DEPOSIT – Cameron, Harry R. and Carson’s Pharmacy

PERRYVILLE — Cameron, Norris C.

RISING SUN — Reynolds, Eli T.

In the northern part of the county, Eli Tucker Reynolds dispensed the medications at the Rising Sun Pharmacy.  After qualifying as a pharmacist, he came to Rising Sun to clerk in the drug store of the G. G. Still and in 1891 he purchased the establishment.  On Friday, September 27, 1929, while working at the prescription counter, he collapsed.  The 61-year-old pharmacist died Monday, September 30, 1929  ⁵

For more See the Delmarva Spanish Flu Archives

Endnotes

1. George McNabb, “Reminiscences of an Influenza Epidemic,” Reminiscences of an Influenza Epidemic (Washington, DC: The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the Navy Department, 1928) https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p249901coll37/id/14422[↩]
2. Moulton, Will C. “What Other Druggists Are Saying.” Northwestern Druggist XXL, no. 12 (December 1918): p, 23.[↩]
3. “Maryland Retail Druggists’.” In Era Druggists Directory, 18th ed., 72–74. New York, NY: D. O. Haynes & Co., 1916. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Era_Druggist_s_Directory_of_the_Unit/JvfNAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=”era druggist’s directory”&printsec=frontcover.[↩]
4. F Rodney Frazer, Parts of Elkton in 1918 As I Remember It (Elkton, MD: Historical Society of Cecil County, 1989) p. 3[↩]
5. Obituary, Eli T. Reynolds, October 4, 1929, Midland Journal[↩]