Out of Difficult Times, An Association is Born: 1920s-1970s
This article is part of a series on the history of AAHP that expands on information originally presented in AAHP’s 100th Anniversary Report.
The American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists was founded in 1923 and its early members included Boericke & Tafel, Ehrhart & Karl, Humphrey’s Pharmacal, John A. Borneman and Sons, Luyties Pharmacal, and Otis Clapp & Sons. This new association was born out of a dramatically changing market landscape. At the turn of the 20th century, there were more than 20 homeopathic medical schools and a number of universities with courses on homeopathy. Roughly 100 hospitals provided homeopathic care and an estimated 1,000 pharmacies offered homeopathic medicines. This era was a high point of homeopathy’s remarkable success.
However, by the 1920s homeopathic schools were closing, partly due to a growing requirement for facility upgrades compounded by dwindling sources of financial support. The resulting decrease in new practitioners occurred as retirement and attrition increased. The same era saw a rise in popularity of newly-developed allopathic “miracle drugs” that were easy to prescribe to a wide range of patients.
These factors caused both a decline in homeopathic manufacturers and a shift away from homeopathic products being primary offerings at the remaining manufacturers. For instance, Standard Homeopathic Company (now Hyland’s) focused on Hyland’s Pink Aspirin for Children; Borneman and Sons and others were drug wholesalers; and Luyties Pharmacal formed a company called Inland Alkaloids that concentrated on various alkaloids and chemical constituents. The homeopathic industry was shifting from “mom and pop pharmacies” to small manufacturers beginning to operate on larger scales.
It is not surprising that a core group of homeopathic pharmacists and manufacturers came together in the early 1920s to discuss the changing market conditions and take what steps they could take for the preservation of homeopathy in the face of a shrinking practitioner pool. Each had their own path to follow in the coming years; yet in 1923, several influential homeopathic companies with their dedicated pharmacists banded together in a loose grouping to support one another. Thus, was born the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists, which would come to promote quality and consistency in the preparation and manufacture of homeopathic medicines. Due to various priorities of the different companies, the association functioned more as a friendly social forum for competitors than an association working on behalf of a disparate membership.
The newly formed AAHP could not reverse the tides of change impacting the entire homeopathic community. Yet, the collegiality and communication within the association, despite the members’ natural competition in a slowly shrinking market, made it possible for the industry to survive the next 50 years while being well positioned for its resurgence.
Several factors converged in the late 1960s/early 1970s that made the environment ripe for both homeopathy and AAHP to grow in the United States. At this point in time, 50 years of experience with allopathic “miracle drugs” had been amassed along with increased awareness of these products’ side effects. At the same time, there was a revived interest in natural products. “Health food stores,” where consumers could assess homeopathic products, became common in the United States. The resurgence and consistent growth of the U.S. homeopathic market in the late 1970s through today parallels AAHP’s extraordinary growth and its activities.
As national distribution by homeopathic companies grew, the geographic territorial friction between manufacturers that had limited AAHP activities in its first decades melted away. The industry truly began to galvanize when faced with common issues, especially negotiating with government agencies and bureaus on matters affecting business in the 1980s such as reimbursement of alcohol drawback tax. AAHP advocated to retain the status that products above 4X were subject to tax reimbursement called “drawback.” This status was put at jeopardy following an early 1970s shuffle in government agency duties. AAHP formed a special committee to write and file a petition addressing the points of non-potability and the inconsistencies of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms applying its own standards. Out of this commonly supported project, the association grew in cohesion and focused purpose.
With this group effort, AAHP embarked on new goals. Read about the association’s next decade of accomplishments in our History of AAHP series.
This article is part of a series on the history of AAHP that expands on information originally presented in AAHP’s 100th Anniversary Report. The full series of articles includes sections on: