By ©2024Sarah Becker
January 12th is National Pharmacist Day, a day to celebrate your pharmacist’s good care. I, like most, depend on my local pharmacist to fill orders for prescription drugs; explain the food-drug and or drug-drug interactions, allergic reactions and side effects, costs and cost coverage including pharmacy discounts.
Whose talent do I ask you to help me celebrate on the 12th? Alexandria apothecary: Quaker and manumitter Edward Stabler. Stabler died in 1831, at age 61 from scarlet fever.
“When, in 1799, young Edward Stabler borrowed from an uncle a hundred pounds in order to buy stock for the apothecary shop he planned to operate, he did not realize he was establishing a business in which his descendants would continue for the next one hundred forty-one years [1792-1933],” Eleanor Leadbeater wrote in the 1934 Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. “His business prospered.”
“It is not surprising that during those earliest years of the store’s history, General [George] Washington, whose business and friendships often called him to Alexandria, frequently dropped in to talk with Edward Stabler and to purchase supplies to restock the medicine chest at Mount Vernon,” Eleanor continued. “He had the welfare of his slaves as well as the immediate household to consider.”
During the Revolutionary War [1775-1783], the Continental Congress “codified distinctions among doctors, surgeons, and apothecaries.” As of 1775 drugs were in short supply. Purgatives, emetics, opium, cinchona bark, camphor, potassium nitrate and mercury were some of the drugs prescribed. Cinchona bark, for example, contains the quinine chemical.
During the Civil War [1861-1865] Edward Stabler’s grandson, Edward Stabler Leadbeater, Sr. [ESL, Sr.] “remained at his business” [Leadbeater & Co., 1860-1865],” Eleanor wrote. “Husbands and sons marched away to fight for that which after four bitter years was to become forever, ‘The Lost Cause.’”
“ESL, Sr.’s religious scruples forbade his joining the Southern army,” Eleanor explained. A sympathizer of a sort, he “could not force himself to submit to the [Union] edict that, unless the [store’s] clerks took the [Union’s loyalty] oath, all business houses should be closed.” When Union sympathizer and Justice of the peace Lewis Mackenzie declared he would trust no one but Ned Leadbeater to put up his prescriptions Leadbeater & Co. remained open.
As for the store, the business house itself: “old hand blown bottles, the ancient show cases, the shelves covered with gleaming bottles of ingredients for prescriptions as well as the various staples sold by apothecaries for many, many years, all serve to heighten the contrast between this historic business house and a modern drug store,” Eleanor concluded.
Today many modern drug stores—CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid—are closing, creating “pharmacy deserts” in their stead. The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum was designated a Department of the Interior National Historic Landmark in January 2021.
In 1831 scarlet fever was described as a disease “that killed.” The disease occurs when cells in the human body are damaged as a result of infection. Diseases, French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur [1822-1895] said, are caused by invasive microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses or fungi.
In 1617 Jamestown’s Indian villages suffered a fatal smallpox epidemic. In 1793 Alexandria’s Superintendent of Quarantine inspected incoming ships to prevent the spread of yellow fever. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie died of typhoid fever. Pasteur developed his germ theory coincident with the Civil War.
Scarlet fever, a bacterial disease, starts with an outbreak of small, red spots on the skin; more frequent and redder than measles. Later signs include fever, sore throat, headache and, in children, vomiting. There was no medical treatment early on.
It was not until 1923 that researchers George and Gladys Dick identified the streptococcus responsible for scarlet fever. Scarlet fever begins when the unhealthy germs enter the human body. The bacteria cells are so small they can only be seen using a microscope.
Hans and Zacharias Janssen created one of the earliest microscopes—around 1590. It was not until Robert Hooke and Antonj van Leeuwenhoek that today’s compound microscope was created. Hooke published the first book dedicated to the subject of microscopes in 1665.
Today few Americans suffer from scarlet fever. Why? Because doctors know the penicillin drug cures. Sir Alexander Fleming discovered it in 1928. And with penicillin came an influx of antibiotics.
THE DISCOVERY OF PENICILLIN, a New Year’s home experiment.
BACKGROUND: Scarlet fever is caused by Streptococcus bacteria which are found on the skin and in the throat. It is usually treated with a 10-day course of antibiotics. With purified penicillin, the “wonder drug” that launched the antibiotic era.
Penicillium mold naturally produces the antibiotic penicillin. The mold itself is made from fungus. Fungus needs warmth, moisture and, usually, darkness in order to grow well.
GOAL: The purpose of this experiment is to learn how to grow mold.
SUPPLIES: Oranges or lemons; unripe peaches or pears, two dishes or plates, water, plastic and paper bags
INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1: Peel the orange or lemon and wet the peeling with a few drops of water. Place the wet peeling in a plastic bag, close it tightly and put the bag in a dark place. After several days, look at the peeling in the bag. What color is the peeling? The peeling should have turned green. The soft, fuzzy green material is one of the green penicillin molds from which the medicine is made.
Note: Please encourage children not to smell, inhale, or touch the moldy peeling. Some children may suffer from allergies.
Step 2: Try putting the moldy fruit in a paper bag with an unripe peach. Return the closed bag to a dark place. Check the bag in another few days. All of the fruit should have ripened. Why? The mold gives off so much gas that a single, moldy orange or lemon can speed up the ripening of hundreds of pieces of unripe fruit.
Questions:
- What is mold? Mold is a fuzzy growth caused by fungus growing on decaying vegetable or animal matter. The plural of fungus is fungi.
- Name a common type of fungi.
- What effect does light have on mold?
- What is a gas, Ethylene specifically?
Flu season is upon us. Influenza‐associated bacterial and viral infections are responsible for high levels of morbidity and death during pandemic episodes and influenza seasons. Many pharmacists, pharmacies offer vaccinations.
The smallpox vaccine was introduced during the Stabler era, the typhoid vaccine during the Leadbeater epoch. The Stabler-Leadbeater business stores were closed when the 1938 yellow fever vaccine commenced.
The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Shop/Museum awaits your visit. The Shop/Museum is located at 105-107 S. Fairfax St., Alexandria, VA 22314. For more information visit alexandriava.gov/Apothecary.
“Edward Stabler…Having reduced the principles which he adopted; to the test of experience, and finding that they were of efficacy sufficient to sustain him, and of power enough to maintain their integrity and authority over the soul…ventured his all upon them,” son William wrote in 1831.
As for The Lost Cause [1866-1950s]: ESL, Sr.’s 1899 obituary pretty much says it all. “His funeral…was very largely attended.” In addition to eight white pall-bearers, “eight colored men, in the employ of the [expanding] Leadbeater firm, acted as body-bearers.”
About the Author: Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007. Email abitofhistory53@gmail.com