Practitioner, Researcher and Educator: Remington was ‘Teacher of Teachers’

Now synonymous with achievement in pharmacy, the Remington Honor Medal is bestowed each year by the APhA on an outstanding figure in the field—practitioners, researchers, educators. Joseph P. Remington was all three.

Remington’s family was well-ensconced in medical and pharmaceutical worlds of Philadelphia. His father was a physician, and his mother’s side featured an early Pennsylvanian apothecary. His sister married Henry Troth, a PCP founder, and at Troth’s encouragement Remington soon entered the school himself. Remington then worked for Edward Robinson Squibb (the Squibb of what’s today now known as Bristol-Myers Squibb) in Brooklyn, and returned to Philadelphia to assist other PCP founders like Edward Parrish and William Proctor. He was later made a full professor of pharmacy and was instrumental in creating the modern laboratory learning environment.

It was during this time that Remington earned his reputation as a “teacher of teachers, educating several decades’ worth of leading pharmacists, including those who would go on to found and teach at other schools of pharmacy. A major editor and contributor to the United States Pharmacopeia, he served as chairman until his death in 1918. Today his name still adorns a primary textbook in pharmacy education. Now in its 23rd edition, Remington: The Science and Practice of Pharmacy is a book that can be found in nearly every PCP student’s dorm room, as well as on the shelves of nearly all practicing pharmacists.

Categories: Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, Alumni, Proven Everywhere, History, Bicentennial