A contemporary pharmacist could not pass the requisite examinations of pharmacy trainees a century ago, with their requirements of Latin understanding and translation. Contemporary pharmacists now only learn the few Latin abbreviations pertinent to their practice, which might be written on a prescription or patient's medication chart, and which are published in the modern Australian Pharmaceutical Formulary (APF).1 Likewise, our pharmacist forebears would be unlikely to recognise the modern scientific pharmaceutical subjects from pharmacology to pharmacogenomics and pharmacoeconomics. Contemporary Australian pharmacist education involves the completion of either an undergraduate Bachelor of Pharmacy or a post-graduate Master of Pharmacy degree, followed by a year-long period of supervised internship. In Queensland, the first pharmacy degree program was introduced at the University of Queensland in 1960, following a SO-year struggle by the profession. Prior to that time, the training of pharmacists involved a period of apprenticeship and the eventual earning of the Pharmaceutical Chemist (PhC) qualification. This was consistent with the traditional training of pharmacists elsewhere in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK) during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, which involved an apprenticeship system of education.2 Prior to the earliest formal training of apothecaries, common people were often serviced by untrained 'quacks' or local and itinerant herbalists. Trained apothecaries would have passed along their knowledge of treatments and medicines, derived from natural sources, to informal trainees.