DRUGGIST - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

DRUGGISTAuthored

The Law Mind • 942 words

Definition

A druggist is a person whose business is the sale of drugs and medicinal substances. In the strict technical sense, a druggist deals in uncompounded medicinal substances — raw or prepared drugs sold as-is — as distinguished from an apothecary, who mixes and compounds those substances into preparations and prescriptions. In American legal usage, however, the distinction has long been treated as largely academic: the same individual typically performed both functions, and courts and legislatures routinely treated the terms as interchangeable.

The legal significance of the term arises primarily in regulatory and licensing contexts — defining who may lawfully sell drugs, what quantities may be sold, and under what conditions a druggist's trade is subject to licensing requirements distinct from those governing ordinary merchants.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A manufacturer and vendor of drugs and medicines.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who deals in drugs; especially, one who buys and sells drugs without compounding them; also, a pharmaceutist or apothecary.

The common definitions track the legal meaning reasonably well, but they obscure a distinction that once carried real legal weight. Historically, whether a seller was a druggist (dealing in uncompounded substances) or an apothecary (compounding and dispensing) could determine which licensing regime applied, what quantities could be sold, and whether a particular transaction was lawful at all. Modern usage collapses this distinction entirely; legal sources from the nineteenth century do not.

Common Confusion

DRUGGIST vs. APOTHECARY vs. PHARMACIST: These three terms traveled together in historical legal sources and were sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes distinguished with precision. The classical distinction — druggist sells raw or uncompounded substances, apothecary compounds and dispenses — mattered in licensing prosecutions and trade regulation cases. Pharmacist is the modern successor term and carries the weight of contemporary statutory licensing frameworks; neither druggist nor apothecary appears with frequency in modern regulatory codes. Researchers working in nineteenth-century sources must attend to which term a statute or indictment actually uses, as courts occasionally turned on the distinction.

Why It Matters in Research

The term druggist is primarily a historical legal category. Researchers will encounter it in three main contexts:

Licensing and trade regulation cases. The most practically significant legal question attached to druggist status was what a person so classified could sell, in what quantities, and without what additional license. Bouvier's preserves an instructive example: a Kentucky defendant who sold dry goods on one side of his shop and drugs on the other needed a merchant's license for one trade but, as a druggist, could sell liquor in quantities less than a quart without a separate liquor license. These regulatory boundary questions generated litigation, and the definition of druggist was often outcome-determinative.

Drug and poison liability. As tort law developed around the sale of dangerous substances, courts needed to define the standard of care applicable to druggists. Whether a seller qualified as a druggist — rather than a mere general merchant — affected the duty of care analysis. Researchers tracing the history of products liability or negligence in the sale of medicinal substances should track druggist as an occupational classification, not merely a descriptive label.

Transition to modern pharmacy law. The term druggist gives way to pharmacist in twentieth-century statutory language, but the transition is uneven across jurisdictions and time periods. Corpus searches in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources will surface both terms, sometimes within the same statute or case. Do not assume that a source using druggist and one using pharmacist are addressing the same legal category without confirming the applicable statutory definitions.

The Bouvier's entry for APPARATOR in the source material is unrelated to this term and reflects a retrieval artifact; researchers should disregard it in this context.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) provides consistent definitions: a dealer in drugs whose business is to sell drugs and medicines, with the druggist/apothecary distinction noted and immediately qualified by the American practical reality that the same persons performed both functions. The second edition cites State v. Holmes, 28 La. Ann. 767, in support.

Bouvier's Law Dictionary supplies the most operationally useful historical detail, preserving the Kentucky licensing example that illustrates precisely how courts applied the druggist classification in regulatory disputes. Bouvier's also anchors the definition in Louisiana case law (28 La. Ann. 765), suggesting the term had active judicial life in civil law jurisdictions as well as common law ones.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law offers only a fragment in the available source material — "one who deals in medicines, or in the materi-" — but the phrasing aligns with the other dictionaries' core definition.

What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is any sustained treatment of the standard of care or liability questions that druggist status generated in tort contexts. They define the occupational category but do not develop its implications for civil liability, which became increasingly important as the nineteenth century progressed. Researchers should not treat the dictionary definitions as the ceiling of the term's legal significance.

Jurisdictional Note

The druggist/apothecary distinction, already acknowledged as largely nominal in American sources, varied in its legal consequences by state. Licensing statutes were state-specific, and whether a druggist could sell alcohol, what quantities required additional permits, and what record-keeping obligations attached all depended on the applicable state code. Louisiana sources appear with particular frequency in the historical record, likely reflecting that state's distinct regulatory tradition.

DRUGGISTmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

A dealer in drugs; one whose business is to sell drugs and medicines. G In strict usage, this term is to be distin- guished from "apothecary." A druggist deals in the uncompounded medicinal substances; the business of an apothecary is to mix and compound them. But in America the two words are used interchangeably, as the same persons usually discharge both functions.

DRUGGISTmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

APPARATOR (Lat.). A furnisher; a provider. The sheriff of Bucks had formerly a considerable allowance as apparator comitatus (apparator for the county); Cowel.

DRUGGISTmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

One who deals in medi- cinal substances, vegetable, animal, or min- eral, uncompounded. 28 La. Ann. 765. In a Kentucky case on an indictment for sell- ing liquor without license, the defendant sold dry goods on one side of his shop and drugs on the other. As a merchant he needed a license, but as a druggist he could sell in any quantity less than a quart with- out. The charge of the court was that if he was an unlicensed merchant and sold less than a quart he was guilty, unless he was "a druggist in good faith, and his business was compounding and selling drugs." This was reversed for error as confining the busi- ness of a retail druggist or apothecary to one who actually compounds his medicines. For the definition of apothecary under Unit- ed States statutes, see APOTHECARY. In America the term druggist is used synony- mously with apothecary, although, strictly speak- Ing, a druggist is one who deals in medicinal sub- stances, vegetable, animal, or mineral, before being compounded, while composition and combination are really the business of the apothecary. The term is here used in its double sense, and throughout this article is to be read as if druggist or apothecary. In England an apothecary is a sub-physician, or privileged practitioner. He is the ordinary medical man, or family medical attendant, in that country. Under the revived Pharmacy Acts of 82 and 88 Vict. c. 117, any one selling or compounding poisons, or unlawfully using the name of chemist or druggist, or compounding medicines otherwise than accord- ing to the formulse of the British Pharmacopoeia, is liable to a penalty of £5; Oke's Mag. Syn. 564. Druggists are subject to the general rule of law that persons who hold themselves out to the world as possessing skill and qualification for a particular trade or pro- fession are bound to reasonable skill and diligence in the performance of their duties. Accordingly the law implies an undertaking on the part of apothecaries and surgeons that they shall use a reasonable degree of care and skill in the treatment of their patients; Chit. Contr. 558; 66 Ia. 708; 34 La. Ann. 918; 43 Hun 265. This rule is probably more strict in the United States than in England; Webb's Poll. Torts 26, note. One who practises as a druggist, whether under a license or not, holds him- self out as competent to do this, but not to prescribe as a physician; and for any lack of capacity or for negligence, he is answer- able in damages to the person injured, the same principles of law applying to him as to a medical practitioner; Bish. Non-Contr. L. § 716. The utmost care. is required of those who prepare medicines or sell drugs, as the least carelessness may prove injurious to health or fatal in its results. Hence druggists are held responsible for injuries resulting from a want of usual care and skill. The highest degree of skill is not to be expected nor can it reasonably be required of all; 39 Me. 156. Perhaps a higher degree of skill than is the usual rule was required in 18 B. Monr. 219; in that case it was held that any mistake made by the druggist, if the result of igno- rance or carelessness, renders him liable to the injured party; 7 N. Y. 397. Where one, whether an apothecary or not, negli- gently gave a customer poison and the customer swallowed it and was injured, he who negligently gave the poison was guilty of a tort, and liable for the injury to the customer unless the latter was also guilty of negligence which contributed to the in- jury; 61 Ia. 64. If a druggist negligently sells a deadly poison as a harmless medicine to A, who administers it to B and Btakes it as a medicine and dies in a few hours by reason thereof, a right of action against the druggist survives to B's administrator; 106 Mass. 143. The sale of an article in itself

DRUGGISTn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

One who deals in drugs; especially, one who buys and sells drugs without compounding them; also, a pharmaceutist or apothecary.

druggistnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

A manufacturer and vendor of drugs and medicines.

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