While I had planned a visit to the museum for some time, I decided to be spontaneous and take in the Coit Museum of Pharmacy & Health Sciences on this incredibly hot June afternoon. After dealing with some challenging parking and a bit of a hunt to find the entrance, I found myself at the door to a small but well-planned and executed exhibit space.
It really is two rooms filling about 2,000 square feet. The front room is a collection of medicines bottles and brand names from the late 1800s. Much of this collection was relinquished to the U of A by The Disney company. It had been most of the contents of the drug store at the entrance to the park on Main Street in Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. White laminate, glass-fronted cases hold the displays.
As you leave the front room and enter the second room, things warm us. A faux pharmacy front door takes the visitor into the tiled space that features a drug store soda fountain to the right and a showcase to the left. Displays of cameras, film, toys and other “sundries” dot the space. After having grown up in drug stores my father either owned or managed, I felt like a time traveler. Memories of soda fountains, typewriters and shelves of pharmaceuticals took me back to Bowie, Willcox and 1960s Tucson.
The display showing the “genealogy” of todays Big Pharma companies is the end cap of the second room. Upjohn, Parke Davis and other names of old are placed to show their ties to today’s Eli Lilly and others.
The final display is a wall of mortars and pestles of all shapes and sizes. I remember some of these itmes being displayed in our stores and homes of my childhood.
The real bonus of the day was the docent assigned this day. I learned very quickly that the octogenarian host had been an intern to my dad! Tom had his own history of family drug stores and Tucson drug store history. But his education included my dad.
While a small space with limited hours, it is well worth a visit.
Relentless
