About the Collection

The idea of publishing this collection of Harvey A. K. Whitney Lecture Award addresses was largely an outgrowth of the establishment of the Donald E. Francke Memorial Library at the ASHP headquarters building in 1982. The purpose of the Francke Memorial Library is to chronicle the evolution and development of institutional pharmacy in the United States. When the steering committee was formulating plans for the Library, it listed this collection of addresses among the various publications that should be acquired. It is not difficult to understand why this collection came to mind. The men and women who wrote these addresses played prominent roles in the development of hospital pharmacy in this country. Collectively, the addresses constitute a condensed chronicle of this development. They portray the history and culture of institutional pharmacy practice from 1950 up to the present time.

All but one of the addresses presented since 1950 are included in this volume. The address by Dr. Robert P. Fischelis (1966) was never published, and we must conclude that he did not prepare a finished manuscript. All but three of the remaining 56 addresses were published in The Bulletin of the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (through 1957), the American Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (through 1994), or the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy (through the present). The unpublished addresses are those by Donald E. Francke (1953), Gloria Niemeyer Francke (1955), and Sister Mary John (1957). Since Don Francke was editor of the Bulletin during those years, only he could tell us why they were not published; we were, however, able to obtain copies.

Publication of the Whitney addresses has been made possible through a generous grant by sanofi-aventis to the ASHP Research and Education Foundation. For more information about the ASHP Research and Education Foundation as well as the programs and awards it offers, please visit www.ashpfoundation.org

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