Drugstores

[Futwick]

 

[Futwick]

 

[Futwick]

 

[3fingers]

Thank you for posting these. I loved going to the drug store as a child. The soda fountain, the camera counter, testing tubes from the radio or TV, getting some penny candy. You could do most anything at the drug store. It was also nice and cool in the summer. We lost our last local drug store a couple of years ago (there were 4 or 5 in this town when I was growing up). The owner took an offer to sell out to a chain that included a job for him at their location here.

 

[Futwick]

Drugstores have a very long history going back at least to Ancient Babylon. "Drugstore" is a modern term so we call these ancient drugstores apothecaries. They appear to have been around as long as 4600 years ago! There were probably even older apothecaries in China. Apothecaries lasted in the West until the 19th century when medical science prompted a more updated name such chemist or pharmacist. Seeking to leave the superstitious and mystical image behind, the medical profession chose a strange way to do it. Pharmacy derives from the Greek pharma implying poison and sorcery. Chemistry is derived from the word alchemy.

I don't know when "drugstore" started to be used although it is not likely older than the early 20th century or possibly late in the 19th century. Now the man behind the counter was called a "druggist." Even then the word drug means "dry wares" and refers to herbs that needed to be dried out before being sold. By the 16th century, drug meant poison. Even the "Rx" seen on pharmacy signs and what not is derived from the Ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus.

The selling of candies and tobacco not particularly new as earlier chemists and apothecaries often did the same. But by the 20th century, drugstores started to sell paperback books in addition to newspapers and magazines. By the 50s, drugstores became popular places to hang out for high school kids after school for two reasons--drugstores now routinely whipped up and sold malts, milkshakes, ice cream sundaes and the like as well as installing a jukebox with all the latest rocknroll hits so drugstores became underage discotheques. A lot of 50s rocknroll songs referred to drugstores in the lyrics or contained the word in the title such as Janis Martin's 1957 hit "Drugstore Rock" and Ricky Nelson's "Waitin' in School" which contained the lyric "runnin' down to the drugstore to get a soda pop, throw a nickel in the jukebox and we start to rock."

However, early the 20th century, similar forms of entertainment could be had at the drugstores in the form of nickelodeons. A nickelodeon came in many forms--a large music box that played a large metal disc with thousands of little perforations, player-pianos (aka pianola), even a cylinder or disc player that was coin-operated and listened to through a glass case that one stuck a pair of stethoscope-like earbuds to in order to hear the music. Later, even movies (which were all of 15-minutes long back then) were shown in a backroom. Dime novels and literature popular with kids were sold there too and so there was often little to no difference between a drugstore and a nickelodeon parlor.

Game arcades were just an offshoot of the drugstore experience early in the 20th century as were cinemas and drive-ins. Yet, the candy and refreshments were still sold in these places. Now it's internet cafes and hookah parlors that have kind of taken the place of the old drugstore experience. Where will it go from here?

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Hookah parlors?" Around here, that's what we call the place where all the sailors go when they're on shore leave.

Here's our own local drugstore, which ran on the same corner for nearly a century before being evicted a few years ago to make way for an "upscale" bank. I disapproved.

Anyone under the age of 45 probably doesn't know the best-known drugstore catchphrase: "Put them funnybooks back, this ain't a library."

 

[Futwick]

"Hookah parlors?" Around here, that's what we call the place where all the sailors go when they're on shore leave.

I was a sailor and never went to a hookah parlor but these are now becoming mainstream as their one a couple of miles down the road from me--far from any sailors. I've never been in it because I don't smoke.

Here's our own local drugstore, which ran on the same corner for nearly a century before being evicted a few years ago to make way for an "upscale" bank. I disapproved.

Cool.

Anyone under the age of 45 probably doesn't know the best-known drugstore catchphrase: "Put them funnybooks back, this ain't a library."

I have some quasi-comics from the early 1900s. They had full-color covers but the stories inside were just text--no pictures. These were adventure stories for tweeny boys to get into. I suppose these were sold at the nickelodeon parlors back in the day. Anything to bring the kids in. That's where the money is.

 

[Stanley Doble]

There used to be a law that all stores had to close on Sunday. The drugstore was allowed to be open in case someone got sick. The Kodak company took advantage of this. By selling their film and developing services in drug stores they were available on Sundays and holidays when their customers were most likely to want them, and when other stores were closed.

This may be the reason drug stores eventually developed so many side lines.

 

[Futwick]

How could I have forgotten this gem from Edward Hopper??

 

[Stearmen]

Don't forget the highlight of the month when I was a kid, buying a model airplane kit! I can smell the glue now. No comments from James!

 

[Benzadmiral]

Even the "Rx" seen on pharmacy signs and what not is derived from the Ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus.

I've always understood that the "Rx," an "R" with a slash through its downstroke, came from the Latin recipe, meaning "Take" -- the first word of most early prescriptions (and magic spells, I suppose. "Take one eye of newt . . ."). The "R" makes sense in that context, but why the slash?

 

[Benzadmiral]

How could I have forgotten this gem from Edward Hopper??

We still have one neighborhood drugstore, the "Royal Pharmacy," on Royal Street in the French Quarter. It looks almost exactly like that.

 

[Futwick]

I've always understood that the "Rx," an "R" with a slash through its downstroke, came from the Latin recipe, meaning "Take" -- the first word of most early prescriptions (and magic spells, I suppose. "Take one eye of newt . . ."). The "R" makes sense in that context, but why the slash?

It's a stylized Eye of Horus (below)--see the R shape? It was put on jars in the Egyptian apothecaries to make the medicines in them more efficacious. The eye is that of a falcon which has that mark under it and the long spiral is a cheetah's tail. It was a representation of the swift, sure flight of the sun through the heavens each day under which it saw everything and knew everything on earth. When the Greeks began using it, they stylized the falcon's eye into their letter of healing which is Rho which looks like our letter P. Then the cheetah's tail was added which was abbreviated as an X. Today it means "as directed."

Rearranged, the Rx is the chi-rho cross which was also the original Christian cross:

It is an astrological symbol. The cross is the intersection of the celestial equator (earth's equator projected into the sky) and the ecliptic (the sun's apparently path through the sky). When the sun crosses that intersection (which is X shaped) in March, spring officially begins. Here, the sun is "nailed" to the cross and his "blood" (the sun's red rays) falls to the earth to rejuvenate the soil and heal or indemnify the earth (which why the sun is represented as rho or the Greek letter of healing) and the resurrection begins as the earth once again blooms with life after the long, harsh, dead winter. Sorry to all the Christians reading this but it never was a historical occurrence. No offense intended.

It's amazing how many symbols and institutions we have today that we take for granted and regard as totally mundane that in fact are ancient and actually have deep symbolical and allegorical meanings and are steeped in the ancient mysteries.

 

[Futwick]

The mortar and pestle, by the way, is a symbol of female and male respectively. The grinding action symbolizes sexual union and ground product is creation. In this case, we are talking the cosmic male (Osiris) and cosmic female (Isis) creating the perfected human being and his symbol is on the mortar--Rx--the Cosmic Christ (Horus-Ra).

 

[LizzieMaine]

I guess that explains why our neighborhood pharmacist always seemed to have a smile on his face.

 

[Foxer55]

Futwick,

It's amazing how many symbols and institutions we have today that we take for granted and regard as totally mundane that in fact are ancient and actually have deep symbolical and allegorical meanings and are steeped in the ancient mysteries.

Indeed, I find this sort of thing very fascinating. Its amazing how ignorant people are of these origins and histories as well as how disrespectful they are of them. We are (fortunately or unfortunately) the sum of this vast human journey and just because some aborigine somewhere thought the gods were abusing him doesn't mean we should disparage his beliefs. That was the only way he could rationalize his existence and circumstances. It still is in many cases and who is to say otherwise.