[Legislation or market forces? Apothecaries and druggists in the Interwar Period]

In 1865, Dutch Parliament accepted four laws regulating the national health care system and the organization of the medical profession. Together with the Law on Higher Education, that went into effect in 1876, they led to the raising of pharmacy to academic levels. Many expected this would deal the death blow to the chemist and druggist profession (drogist) and leave the apothecaries with a monopoly. The opposite, however, happened. The number of druggists increased dramatically in the decades following the 1865 legislation; their business was thriving due to the sale of secret remedies, the new synthetic remedies and other remedies that were popular with the public. This article deals with the heated debates between apothecaries and druggists over their position on the pharmaceutical market as well as with their laborious efforts to cooperation, the main question being how to control the sale of medicines: either by state legislation or by market forces. It turns out that the apothecaries expected much of the former but did not, their academic status notwithstanding, reject the latter on fundamental grounds.