Pharmacy in Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls has several old and continuously operated pharmacies that have been treating patients since the 1800s, and though they have changed hands and locations since their founding one of the most enduring of these pharmacies was Thorburn’s.
Thorburn’s Pharmacy is still a recognized name in Niagara Falls, despite it no longer operating under that name. The business was started by Allen Cameron Thorburn in 1898 at the corner of Main & Ferry just a block from the Museum’s location under the name Battleground Pharmacy before changing to Thorburn’s Drug Store a few years later. The building that housed Thorburn’s has been a feature of the neighbourhood since the mid-19th century when it was built to house a dry goods store, and still exists to this day – it has held everything from pawnshops to a police station over the years.
Eventually the Thorburn’s franchise expanded to include branches on Victoria Avenue, Erie Avenue, Queen Street, and Portage Road in Stamford. In 1929 after being manager there for several years, J.W. Meadows bought the Stamford branch from A.C. Thorburn, and when Thorburn passed away in 1933 the remaining business was sold to Clarence Muisner and William T. Combe.
Not only is the Museum located down the block from one of Thorburn’s original locations, we also have objects in our collection that relate to this long-running pharmacy’s history. This ledger book was created by A.C. Thorburn by pasting scripts he received from patients given to them by various doctors who worked at the first Niagara Falls Hospital. The book was originally a tavern log from the Rosli House Hotel, with the scripts pasted overtop of the original pages once they’d been compounded and given to the patient – the signatures underneath can still be seen in places – though it’s now filled front-to-back with roughly 5000 scripts from dated between 1899 and 1904.
These scripts tell a story. The pages range from personalized script pads for each doctor to spare scraps of paper given out at house calls, and just looking at the prescriptions given to patients shows the reader how much the field of medicine has changed.
Although one has to squint past stereotypically messy handwriting and translate a bit of Latin to decipher them, they hold some interesting information. Common medications often included things we now associate negatively – cocaine, mercury, belladonna, turpentine, chloroform, and lead were all common ingredients or even prescribed on their own. Some other ingredients are still used today in different quantities, such as ipecac or codeine, or are used similarly but with more restrictions such as opiates and narcotics. While some pharmacies today still compound some of their own mixtures, many choose instead to receive them from manufacturers already done; in the 1800s it was a key part of the pharmacist’s job, and the scripts given to them by doctors often held instructions for application such as tinctures, creams, capsules, or powders taken in water which the pharmacist had to blend.
The medical field has changed in many ways since the opening of the first Thorburn’s Pharmacy location where this ledger book originated, from ingredients and methods used all the way down to the role of the pharmacist overall. But their dedication to helping patients remains, and the legacy of long-running local businesses like Thorburn’s still exists in Niagara Falls to this day.