America's pre-pharmacopoeial literature

The pharmacopoeia, whether official or quasi-official, represents a noteworthy responsibility and maturity in medical and pharmaceutical professional development. The absence of a high level of development in the British American colonies therefore accounts for the absence of any indigenous American pharmaceutical literature in the colonial period. By the same token, as medical education and science improved and as pharmacy developed autonomy in the early national period, there followed a burst of publications that preceded the issuance of the first Pharmacopoeia of the United States of America in 1820.