The Pharmaceutical Symbolism of O. Henry

The Pharmaceutical Symbolism of O. Henry

by Robert A. Buerki*

*Professor Emeritus, Division of Pharmacy Practice and Adminis-tration, The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy, 500 West Twelfth Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1291. Adapted from “The Pharmaceutical Symbolism of O. Henry,” a paper presented to the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy Section on Contrib-uted Papers, May 16, 1977, New York, New York.

Within the short span of a decade, a quiet, prepossessing Southerner called Will Porter be-came the most widely-read writer in the United States; from 1899 to 1910, he produced nearly 300 short stories that captured the fancy and touched the hearts of countless newspaper and magazine readers of his own time—stories that are still enjoyed by millions throughout the world. So popular did his method become that the modern short story was thereby standard-ized—and his pseudonym, “O. Henry,” has itself become a symbol to represent a recognizable species of short-story writing.

The Early YearsO. Henry was born William Sidney Porter,

in Greensboro, North Carolina, on 11 September 1862. Neither of his parents appear to have had a strong direct influence on young Will Porter; his mother died of tuberculosis when Will was three years old, and it is doubtful whether he had more than the dimmest memory of her.1 His father, Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter, was regard-ed as the leading physician of Guilford County

with a strong inventive turn, yet his career was marred by a marked tendency toward tippling and a genial fecklessness. According to one of Will’s schoolmates, Dr. Porter “fell a victim to

the delusion that he had solved the problem of perpetual motion, and finally abandoned a splendid practice and spent nearly all his time working on his machines.”2 As he grew older, Dr. Porter gave less attention to his profession and increasingly devoted his time to impracti-cal inventions, particularly after the death of his wife.3 It was well-known in Greensboro that Dr. Porter drank to excess; rumors circulated, and it was whispered that he was no longer capable

Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter, O. Henry’s father.

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as a physician.4 The neglected medical practice began to dwindle, eventually declining to almost nothing, and Dr. Porter ceased to be a support to his family. The burden of maintaining the household fell upon the shoulders of Will’s stern paternal grandmother, Mrs. Ruth Porter, and his maternal aunt, Miss Evelina Porter, an ex-ceptional woman whose influence upon Will was both deep and lasting.5 “Miss Lina,” as she was called, also kept a small private primary school that adjoined the Porter residence as one means of providing the family income. Miss Lina was a forceful disciplinarian who served not only as Will’s surrogate mother but also as the best teacher he ever had. Under her tutelage, Will learned respect for the written word as well as for the essentials of creative art. There is no doubt that her enthusiasm and discipline were the forces that aroused Porter’s youthful passion for reading and his later desire to create.6

The Drug Store Years, 1879-1882At the age of fifteen, Will’s formal school-

ing ended; his aunt was hard-pressed to support the family, and Will was encouraged to take the first job that was offered. Following in his fa-ther’s erratic footsteps, he went to work as an apprentice pharmacist in the drugstore oper-ated by his uncle, W. Clark Porter. Located on Elm Street across from the old Benbow Hotel, the store was a social gathering place for the town’s leading characters and men of substance alike. Many of the local celebrities met daily in the drugstore, where they repeated the news, exchanged stories, talked politics, or re-fought the war from Sumter to Appomattox while they played checkers or dominoes. These patrons and loungers were a curious study in character types of the Old South, and Porter’s Drug Store a fine place to study humanity in its unbuttoned state; the male citizens of the town gathered around

The Porter and Tate pharmacy operated by Will’s uncle, W. Clark Porter.

4 www.aihp.org Pharmacy in History

the potbellied stove, smoked cigars, and gener-ally let their hair down. Behind the store there were stakes for horseshoe pitching and a pistol range on which Will, in his spare time, devel-oped into a marksman.7

During the next four years, Will quickly but unobtrusively learned the tools of the trade and mastered thoroughly the techniques and secrets of the pharmacopoeia; his qualifications were officially established in the records of the North Carolina Pharmaceutical Association, where his name appears on the first list of drug-gists registered on 30 August 1881, the date on which all practicing pharmacists were required by state law to have a license.8 Between filling prescriptions, replenishing the decanter from the whiskey barrel in the basement, and selling cigars and sundries, Will was storing up count-less impressions of his patrons’ personal oddi-ties, mannerisms, gestures, and modes of speech that were later to be reflected in his stories. In his spare time, Will amused himself by draw-ing cartoons of the townsfolk; the cartoons were marked by a certain amount of wit and percep-tion, a healthy dose of irreverence, and a dash or two of malice.9

Will’s drugstore years have doubtless been over-idealized in the recollections of ag-ing cronies, as recent biographers agree;10 yet Will appears to have enjoyed himself: one con-temporary recalled him “holding court” in the drugstore among men two or three times older due to his quick wit and unquenchable sense of mischief; Will also became good friends with Dr. James K. Hall, who had gradually assumed Dr. Porter’s dwindling practice. Several of Will’s pranks were regarded highly enough to become part of the Greensboro legend: Once he poured a measure of syrup into a urine specimen left for testing by Dr. Hall; it was the doctor’s own urine. When Dr. Hall returned later to conduct the test, he diagnosed himself as a diabetic on the verge of collapse. The physician was about to compose his will when someone—not Will—worked up the courage to tell him about the practical joke.11 At the same time, Will appar-ently found the daily grind of the drugstore an agonizing drudgery; the drugstore appeared to offer nothing but stagnation to Will, and there seemed to be no prospect of finding a better position.12 Moreover, the long hours were play-

ing havoc with his health: Will suffered from a chronic, hacking cough, which caused the older townsfolk to nod to each other with melancholy significance; young Will, in their opinion, wasn’t long for this world.13 Dr. Hall, too, worried over Will’s health, and in March, 1882, when he and his wife invited Will to accompany them as their guest on a visit to their four sons in the dry and salubrious climate of Texas, Will took the offer and left Greensboro, happy to escape from the hometown to which he never returned.14 Will ap-plied to Morley Brothers, a large wholesale and retail drug firm, located on East Pecan Street in Austin. He was told that as soon as he could prove his qualifications, the place would be his. Will’s letter to Greensboro, asking for creden-tials, by two letters of recommendation: One let-ter, signed by four Greensboro physicians, com-mended Will “both as a druggist and a citizen.” The other letter, signed by J. N. Nelson, clerk of courts of Guilford County and endorsed by the registrar of deeds and the postmaster, declared the bearer a “young man of good character, an A No. 1 druggist and a very popular young man among his many friends.” Will went to work with an enthusiasm that quickly waned; after the freedom of the range, the long and regular hours of the drugstore proved confining and irksome. Within two months he gave up the job with the explanation that drawing soda had proved too much for him.15

The Shadowed Years, 1898-1901Will Porter’s next practice of pharmacy

was in the Ohio Penitentiary as Federal Pris-oner No. 30664; it came about in this way: In January, 1891, Will obtained a job as a teller in the First National Bank of Austin, an astonish-ing bank, run with astonishing laxity. Overdrafts on accounts were allowed continually, and an officer of the bank might not even bother to write a check, merely saying to a teller that he was drawing out some money.16 In November, 1894, when irregularities were found in Will’s accounts, he lost his job with the bank and went to Houston, where he worked for a time on the Houston Post. In 1896, when federal authorities arrested him and ordered him to stand trial for embezzlement, Will fled to Honduras while free on bail. The following January, the illness of his


wife called him back to Austin, where he faced federal prosecution. Will’s trial opened in Feb-ruary, 1898; to the four original indictments for embezzlement, two more were added as a result of his flight to avoid prosecution. Will made lit-tle effort to defend himself; he was found guilty, and sentenced to a prison term of five years, the lightest sentence possible under the prevailing law.

Many of Will’s apologists, determined to exonerate him, have argued that the latter charge, a technicality, was the sole reason for sending an innocent man to prison; that he was accordingly made a scapegoat, the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice, in order to vindi-cate the harshness of federal authorities, if not actually to shield other guilty superiors.17 On the other hand, in what appears to be the most thor-ough and impartial analysis of all the available documentary evidence in Will’s case, it seems obvious not only that he was guilty but also that he received a perfectly fair trial, in which all the charges against him were established to the satisfaction of the jury and of many others be-sides.18

When William Sydney Porter entered the Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus on April 25, 1898, he lost his identity to the world. He listed his primary occupation as a newspaper reporter; he also noted, as an afterthought, that he was a registered pharmacist.19 There was no prison newspaper, but the infirmary could always use a pharmacist, and Porter was soon placed in the prison hospital as night drug clerk. It came about in this way, as Alexander Hobbs, a black prisoner who acted as valet to one of the physi-cians, recalled:

One day Warden E. G. Coffin was given an overdose of Fowler’s solution of arsenic. The right antidote couldn’t be found and the day physician, the nurses, and all the prison officers were crowded around the bed on which the warden was lying, in great fright. Everybody was panic-stricken and it looked like the warden, who was unconscious, was going to die with doctors and a drugstore right there beside him. Then Mr. Porter, who had been upstairs nursing a sick prisoner, came walking down. He had learned what was the matter. I can just see him yet, as he came down those stairs, as quiet and composed as a free citizen out for a walk. “Be quiet, gentlemen,” he says, and walks over to the drugstore and takes charge, just as easy as if he owned the prison. Then he mixes a little drink, just like mixing a soda water. In an hour the warden was out of danger and the next day Mr. Porter was made night drug clerk.20

Dr. John M. Thomas, chief physician at the prison, described Porter as an “unusually competent” pharmacist: “In fact, he could do anything in the drug line.”21 The night physician at the Penitentiary, Dr. George W. Willard, not-ed that Porter was “exceptionally careful and ef-ficient” in his pharmaceutical work. “He was as careful and conscientious as if the drugstore at the prison had been his own property,” Dr. Wil-lard noted. “Often I left at midnight with Porter in charge and I knew things would run as regu-larly and effectively until morning as if I had re-mained . . . . Although nearly every drug clerk at the prison was at some time or other guilty of petty trafficking in drugs or whiskey, Porter was always above reproach.”22 Yet Porter’s letters to his in-laws tell their own story:

I accidentally fell into a place on the day I arrived that is a light one in comparison with others. I am the night drug-gist in the hospital, and as far as work is concerned it is light enough, and all the men stationed in the hospital live a hundred per cent. better than the rest of the 2,500 men here. There are four doctors and about twenty‑five other men in the hospital force. The hospital is a separate building and is one of the finest equipped institutions in the country. It is large and finely finished and has every appliance of medicine and surgery. . . .

The hospital wards have from one hundred to two hundred patients in them all the time. They have all kinds of diseases—at present typhus fever and measles are the fashion. Consumption here is more common than bad colds are at home. There are about thirty hopeless cases of it in the hospital just now and nearly all the nurses and attendants are contracting it. There are hundreds of other cases of it among the men who are working in the shops and foundries. Twice a day they have a sick call at the hospital, and from two hundred to three hundred men are marched in each day suffering from various disorders. They march in single file past the doctor and he prescribes for each one “on the fly.” The procession passes the drug counter and the medicines are handed out to each one as they march without stopping the line.23

About six weeks later, Porter described graphi-cally the horrors of prison life as he found them:

I have gotten quite expert at practicing medicine. It’s a melancholy place, however—misery and death and all kinds of suffering around one all the time. We sometimes have a death every night for a week or so. Very little time is wasted on such an occasion. One of the nurses will come from a ward and say—“Well, So and So has croaked.” Ten minutes later they tramp out with So and So on a stretcher and take him to the dead house. If he has no friends to claim him—which is generally the case—the next day the doctors have


a dissecting bee and that ends it. Suicides are as common as picnics here. Every few nights the doctor and I have to strike out at a trot to see some unfortunate who has tried to get rid of his troubles. They cut their throats and hang themselves and stop up their cells and turn the gas on and try all kinds of ways. Most of them plan it well enough to succeed . . . . These little things are our only amusements.24

Beatings to the point of insensibility, ran-cid food purchased by bribed prison officials, neglect to the extent of being carted off to the morgue while still alive, and other inhuman bru-talities suffered by the prisoners generally left Porter too stunned to comment openly about them. When his fellow prisoners urged him to expose these conditions in his writings, he is said to have replied that, since he was not a re-porter, the prison and its shame were not his re-sponsibility, and that he would never try to rem-edy “the diseased soul of society,” adding, “I will forget that I ever breathed behind these walls.”25

In October, 1900, Dr. Thomas used his influence to secure for Porter the favored posi-tion of bookkeeper and private secretary to the prison steward, ending forever his erratic phar-maceutical career.26 He began to write seriously now, under the pen name “O. Henry,” producing fourteen short stories which critics have rated as being among his best.27 On July 24, 1901, his sentence shortened for good behavior, William Sydney Porter passed out of the Penitentiary

walls and into the annals of American literature.During the final nine years of his life, Bill

Porter, as O. Henry, pursued a career as brief as it was brilliant. When he left Columbus, Bill went to Pittsburgh, secluding himself at the slightly rusty Iron Front Hotel, where he wrote almost continuously, keeping himself in walk-around money by free-lancing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch.28 Restless after six months, Bill moved into shared quarters over Emil G. Stucky’s drug-store at the corner of Fulton and Wylie streets; his roommate was a young drug clerk named Samuel C. Jamison, later to become coroner of Allegheny County and an important political fig-ure.29 Bill continued to submit his manuscripts to editors in New York, particularly Gilman Hall, associate editor of Ainslee’s Magazine and, later, Everybody’s Magazine. Hall offered to guaran-tee Bill a regular income if he would come to New York; in April, 1902, he came, becoming O. Henry once and for all.30 What followed is a fab-ulous story of success; in less than eight years, O. Henry became the most widely read storytell-er in the country. Readers were enchanted with the romance that he found in drab boarding houses and forgotten streets. They shared his pity for little people, savored his nostalgia for what might have been, and were delighted when his surprise endings routed misfortune. Despite their contrived plots and occasional clowning, O. Henry’s stories are significant social docu-ments, artistically told. According to Eugene Current-Garcia, one secret of O. Henry’s staying power may be found in the representative qual-ity of his stories:

They are above everything else indubitably American in language, attitudes, and spirit; for the voices of Americans, native and naturalized, recognizably speak through them. Another secret of their continuing appeal may be found in the pervasive humor that supports them: a brand of humor often gauche, smart-alecky, overripe, and also thoroughly American. A third quality, hard to define yet plainly felt in them as something transcending national boundaries, is a kind of basic human sympathy for the common joys and sorrows of mankind that appeals to the romanticist in each of us.31

O. Henry’s Pharmaceutical LegacyThat critical phase of Will Porter’s early

life was affected and shaped by his contact with

O. Henry in 1896, Austin, Texas.


and his practice of the profession of pharmacy appears obvious; what is not so obvious is the pervasive nature of pharmaceutical symbolism throughout O. Henry’s writings, his references to pharmacists and pharmaceutical practice, pharmaceutical equipment and techniques, and drugs and their uses, both legitimate and ille-gitimate. An analysis of the 483 short stories, poems, letters, and squibs contained within the seventeen volumes attributed to O. Henry re-veals the extent of this pervasive symbolism.

Table 1 lists the assigned reference code numbers, titles, publication dates, allusion ra-tios, and percentages contained within O. Hen-ry’s published works. All but one volume of O. Henry’s work, Letters to Lithopolis (1922), a se-ries of amusing letters from O. Henry to Mabel

Wagnalls, contain at least one pharmaceutical, medical, or chemical allusion.32 The allusion ra-tio of the other volumes ranges from 1/12 (or 8.3 per cent) in Waifs and Strays (1917) to 15/25 (or 60.0 per cent) in The Trimmed Lamp (1907). Taken together, at least 27.2 per cent, or 131 of the 482 published items attributed to O. Henry contain such allusions. If one disregards the seven fugitive stories and poems published in O. Henryana (1920) and the two collections of O. Henry’s early unsigned work on the Houston Post, Postscripts (1923) and O. Henry Encore (1939), the allusion ratio increases to 104/287, or an astonishing 36.2 per cent.33 There is no discernable trend in the number of allusions from volume to volume, and indeed, any attempt to follow the chronology of either the volumes or

Table 1. Extent of Pharmaceutical Allusions Contained within O. Henry’s Writings

Allusion AllusionTitle and Publication Date Ratio* Percentage

Cabbages and Kings (1904) 3/19 15.8The Four Million (1906) 6/25 24.0The Trimmed Lamp (1907) 15/25 60.0Heart of the West (1907) 7/19 36.8The Voice of the City (1908) 10/25 40.0The Gentle Grafter (1908) 7/14 50.0Roads of Destiny (1909) 9/22 40.9Options (1909) 5/16 31.3Strictly Business (1910) 13/23 56.5Whirligigs (1910) 7/24 29.2Sixes and Sevens (1911) 9/25 36.0Rolling Stones (1912) 12/38 31.6Waifs and Strays (1917) 1/12 8.3 Subtotal: 104/288 36.1

Fugitive Stories and Poems

O. Henryana (1920) 3/7 42.7Letters to Lithopolis (1922) 0/8 --- Subtotal: 107/303 35.3

Early Work on Houston Post

Postscripts (1923) 14/135 10.4O. Henry Encore (1939) 10/45 22.2 Total: 131/482 27.2

*Calculated as the number of stories, poems, or squibs containing at least one pharmaceutical allusion, divided by the total number of stories contained within the volume.


the individual stories would be pointless, since many of O. Henry’s earliest written stories were not published until the end of his life, while many of the last ones he wrote dealt with expe-riences dating back to his earliest memories.34 A list of stories containing pharmaceutical al-lusions in O. Henry’s literary output by volume appears as Appendix A.

Prescription Drugs and Other Drugstore Items

At least 107 different prescription drug items appear at least 193 times in 79 stories over a span of 16 of O. Henry’s 17 books included in the standard one-volume collection of O. Hen-ry’s works, O. Henryana, Postscripts, and O. Henry Encore;35 these items are enumerated in Table 2, as “Pharmacopoeia O. Henrici.”

Table 2. “Pharmacopoeia O. Henrici”

AnilineAnnatoAntipyrineAqua Fortis (Nitric Acid)Aqua PuraAromatic Spirits of AmmoniaArsenicBalm of HyssopBalsam of PeruBone Phosphate (Calcium Phosphate)Borax (Sodium Borate)Calisaya BarkCalomel (Mercurous Chloride)CamphorCarbolic Acid (Phenol)Caustic Potash (Potassium Hydroxide)Chloral HydrateChloride of Sodium; Salt; Sodium ChlorideChloroformChuchulaDiluted AlcoholElixir of EuculyptusEtherFluidextract of ChuchulaFluidextract of CinchonaGentian BarkGlonoin (Spirit of Nitroglycerin)

Gum Opium (q.v. “Opium”)Hydrochloric Acid (“Muriate”)Hydrogen PeroxideJalapLaudanum (Tincture of Opium)LicoriceLime (Calcium Oxide)Logwood (Hematoxylon)Magnesium CarbonateMandragora (Mandrake)Mild Chloride (q.v. “Calomel”)MorphineMuriate (q.v. “Hydrochloric Acid”)MyrrhNitromuriatic AcidOil of AlmondsOil of AniseOil of BergamotOil of TarOil of WintergreenOleoresin of CubebsOpium (q.v. “Gum Opium”)OpodeldocParegoric (Deodorized Tincture of Opium)PeppermintPeptomanganate of IronPhosphorus PillsPipsinssewaPrepared Chalk (Calcium Carbonate)Quinine (q.v. “Cinchona”)Rochelle Salt (q.v. “Tartrate of Sodium and Potash”)Rose WaterSalt of Tartar (Potassium Carbonate)SarsaparillaSeidlitz PowderSpiritus Frumenti (Whisky)StrychnineSugar PillsSulphurSyrup of HypophosphitesTincture of BenzoinTincture of CalisayaTincture of Cardamom, CompoundTincture of CinchonaTincture of FormaldehydeTincture of GentianTincture of IodineTincture of Nux VomicaVaccine MatterValerinate of AmmoniaWormwood (q.v. “Absinthe”)


O. Henry refers to “morphine” at least 11 times, followed closely by “quinine” and “cin-chona,” which are mentioned 10 times. “Chlo-ride of sodium” is referred to 6 times, and “par-egoric” and “tincture of aconite” 5 times each; all other drugs are referred to 4 times or less, 69 substances being mentioned only once. O. Henry also refers to no fewer than 12 different tinctures and 5 different oils, his pharmaceutical spectrum reflecting the limited nature of Amer-ica’s drug armamentarium in the early 1900s. There is only one apparently spurious drug that appears in O. Henry’s works, “fluidextract of chuchula,” the active ingredient of confidence man Judson Tate’s Compound Magic Chuchula Bronchial Lozenges in the story “‘Next to Read-ing Matter’” (Roads of Destiny, 1909).36 The pharmaceutically improper variations on “tar-trate of sodium and potash” and “tartrate of an-timony and potash” may not be attributed to O. Henry, who knew better, but to non-pharmacist Elwyn C. Bellford, the narrator of “A Ramble in Aphasia” (Strictly Business, 1910). Bellford, a prominent Denver lawyer who seemingly cracks under the strain of hard work, forgets his past and boards a train for New York with $3,000 in his pocket, but no baggage. Surrounded by Western pharmacists en route to a convention, he pretends to be one, coining the name Edward Pinkhammer. He encounters pharmacist R .P. Bolder, who has an idea to spring on the conven-tion:

Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Ro-chelle salt—Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart.—one’s poison, you know, and the other’s harmless. It’s easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do druggists mostly keep ‘em? Why, as far apart as possible, on different shelves. That’s wrong. I say keep ’em side by side, so when you want one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes.

Armed with this one bit of pharmaceutical lore, Bellford, as Pinkhammer, brazens out his dis-guise, affording a good deal of pleasure to the careful reader.37

At least 39 other items commonly found in American drugstores at the turn of the pres-ent century appear at least 45 times in 25 sto-ries over a span of 12 of O. Henry’s books; these items are enumerated in Table 3. Most of the proprietary names of the patent medicines list-ed are fictitious, and most appear in the story

Table 3. Other Drugstore Items Mentioned in O. Henry’s Writings

Balm of Gilead PoulticesBay RumBittersBlickerstaff’s Blood BuilderCatarrh CureChiselum’s PillsCough DropsCourt PlasterDyewoodsFinkelham’s ExtractFlaxseedGout LinimentHeadache PowdersIron TonicJerusalem Oak SeedLiver PillsNerve TonicOmberry’s OintmentPainkillerParis GreenPatent MedicinePatent Medicine AlmanacPeppermint-Pepsin TabletsPlaster of ParisPott’s Pain PulverizerQuince SeedsRattlesnake OilRougeRubber PlasterSassafras TeaSleeping PowderSodaSoothing SyrupSticking PlasterSum-wah-tah, the Great Indian RemedyTonic MedicamentWood Alcohol (Methanol)

“Makes the Whole World Kin” (Sixes and Sev‑ens, 1911). The story revolves about a burglar and his victim, both of whom suffer from rheu-matism; they begin comparing symptoms and patent medicines they have tried with little re-lief. The story ends with the burglar standing his ex-victim to drinks.

The frank charlatanism of the early medi-cine shows is captured in “The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear” (Rolling Stones, 1912), in


which confidence man Jeff Peters relates how Eastern college-trained John Tom Little Bear, in his role as Chief Wish-Heap- Dough, prepared Sum-wah-tah, the Great Indian Remedy:

We always camped near a stream, and put up a little tent. Sometimes we sold out of the Remedy unexpected, and then Chief Wish-Heap-Dough would have a dream in which the Manitou commanded him to fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the most convenient place.38

Pharmaceutical Preparations, Operations, Equipment, and Standards

At least 24 different pharmaceutical prepa-rations appear at least 55 times in 24 stories over a span of 11 of O. Henry’s books; these prepara-tions are enumerated in Table 4. Tinctures are mentioned 14 times, powders or powder papers are mentioned 9 times, pills are mentioned 5 times, tablets are mentioned 3 times, and cap-sules, decoctions, lozenges, ointments, and me-dicinal teas are mentioned twice each. Most of the pharmaceutical preparations appear in “The

Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein” (The Four Million, 1906), which describes the tribulations of Ikey Schoenstein, night clerk at the Blue Light Drug Store. Ikey and Chunk McGowan were ri-vals for the hand of Rosy Riddle, the daughter of Ikey’s landlady. Ikey adored Rosy:

She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of everything that was chemically pure and officinal—the Dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears.39

Other pharmaceutical preparations are concentrated in “Man About Town” (The Four Million, 1906), “‘Next to Reading Matter’” (Roads of Destiny, 1909), “A Ramble in Apha-sia” (Strictly Business, 1910), “Let Me Feel Your Pulse” (Sixes and Sevens, 1911), and “A Fog in Santone” (Rolling Stones, 1912).

At least 11 different pharmaceutical opera-tions appear at least 16 times in 7 stories over a span of 6 of O. Henry’s books; these operations are enumerated in Table 5. Again, most of the

Table 4. Pharmaceutical Preparations Men-tioned in O. Henry’s Writings

CapsulesCompoundCompound ExtractDecoctionElixir, DistilledExcipientExtractHypodermic TabletsLinimentLozengesMenstruumMixtureOintmentPillPowder; Powder PaperSoluble TabletsSpiritSublimated EssenceTablet TrituratesTabletsTea, MedicinalTinctureTonic

Table 5. Pharmaceutical Operations Men-tioned in O. Henry’s Writings

CompoundingDistillingFolding Powder PaperGrindingMaking Solution; InsolubilityManipulating Pill MassMasceratingMixingPercolatingPouringRolling Pills

descriptions of the operations appear in “The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein,” and reveal pharmacist O. Henry at his best:

The Blue Light scorns the labor-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It mascerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk—pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes.40

Other pharmaceutical operations are men-tioned in “The Assessor of Success” and “The


Lost Blend” (The Trimmed Lamp, 1907) and, of course, in “A Ramble in Aphasia.” At least 12 dif-ferent pieces of pharmaceutical equipment ap-pear at least 20 times in 7 stories over a span of 7 of O. Henry’s books; these are enumerated in Table 6. Again, most of the pieces of equipment

Only 7 references to pharmaceutical stan-dards, appearing 9 times in only 5 stories found in 5 books, can be found in O. Henry’s writings; these are enumerated in Table 7. This is not

Table 6. Pharmaceutical Equipment Men-tioned in O. Henry’s Writings

Bottles, Eight-OunceBottles, ShelfCorksGraduating Glass; Measuring GlassLitmus PaperMedicine DropperMortarPestlePill BoxesPill TilePrescription DeskSpatula

show up in “The Love Philtre of Ikey Schoen-stein” and “A Ramble in Aphasia,” yet O. Hen-ry’s recurrent reference to the use of litmus pa-per to test the atmosphere in “A Fog in Santone” (Rolling Stones, 1912) creates a mournful litany to visitors suffering from tuberculosis:

Purest atmosphere, sir, on earth! You might think from the river winding through our town that we are malarial, but, no, sir! Repeated experiments made by both the Govern-ment and local experts show that our air contains nothing deleterious—nothing but ozone, sir, pure ozone. Litmus paper tests made all along the river show—but you can read it all in the prospectuses; or the Santonian will recite it for you, word by word.

O. Henry’s personal experiences with the rav-ages of tuberculosis is revealed by the bitterness and the intensity of the following passage:

That night the tubercles, whose ravages hope holds in check, multiplied. The writhing fingers of the pale mist did not go thence bloodless. Many of the wooers of ozone capitulated with the enemy that night, turning their faces to the wall in that dumb, isolated apathy that so terrifies their watch-ers. On the red streams of Hemorrhagia a few souls drifted away, leaving behind pathetic heaps, white and chill as the fog itself. Two or three came to view this atmospheric wraith as the ghost of impossible joys, sent to whisper to them of the egregious folly it is to inhale breath into the lungs, only to exhale it again, and these used whatever came handy to their relief, pistols, gas, or the beneficent muriate.41

Table 7. Pharmaceutical Standards Men-tioned in O. Henry’s Writings

Certificate of PurityChemically PureOfficinalPure Food AdulterationsPure Food and Drug ActUnited States DispensatoryUnited States Pharmacopoeia

unusual, since the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act did not become effective until 1906; indeed, there is some suggestion that O. Henry may have referred to the Act as a topical novelty, as suggested in this passage from “The Pendulum” (The Trimmed Lamp, 1907):

For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and a bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label.42

The effect of the Act is also implied in this de-scription of Major Bing from “He Also Serves” (Options, 1909):

Major Bing was the ointment around the fly. He had the cochineal, sarsaparilla, logwood, annatto hemp, and all other dye-woods and pure food adulteration concessions cornered.43

Even the often hypocritical conferring of honor-ary degrees upon wealthy benefactors, described in “A Night in New Arabia” (Strictly Business, 1910), contains a reference to the Act:

Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up and presented it with a $200,000 laboratory. The college did not maintain a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built an elaborate lavatory, which was no diver-sion of funds so far as Jacob ever discovered. . . .

While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned, Jacob saw two professors strolling near by. Their voices, long adapted to indoor acoustics, undesign-edly reached his ear.

“There goes the latest chevalier d’industrie,” said one of them, “to buy a sleeping powder from us. He gets his degree to-morrow.”

“In foro conscientiae,” said the other. “Let’s ’eave ’arf a brick at ’im.”


Jacob ignored the Latin, but the brick pleasantry was not too hard for him. There was no mandragora in the honorary draught of learning that he had bought. That was before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act.44

Drugstores, Drugs, Druggists, and Doses

The word “drugstore”—referred to vari-ously by O. Henry as a “botica,” “drug empo-rium,” “drug firm,” “druggist’s,” or a “pharma-cy”—appears at least 45 times in 33 different stories over a span of 12 of his 17 books; these are enumerated in Table 8. “Drugs” are re-

Table 8. “Pharmacy” Mentioned in O. Henry’s Writings

Botica Druggist’s Drug Firm Drugstore Drug Emporium Pharmacy

ferred to 27 times in 11 different stories over 9 different books, and “prescriptions” are referred to specifically 13 times in 9 different stories over 7 different books. The pharmacist himself—most often referred to by O. Henry as a “druggist,” “drug clerk,” or merely “clerk”—appears at least 38 times in 19 different stories over a span of 12 different books, and include such wildly de-scriptive variations as “patent tablet-and-gran-ule phamashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk” and “Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream profes-sors,” the latter two offered by pharmacist R. P. Bolder in O. Henry’s tale, “A Ramble in Apha-sia” (see Table 9). O. Henry even specifies the doses of the drugs he mentions, ranging from one-sixtieth of a minim of oleoresin of cubebs to a cupful of calisaya bark tea, the grain (or frac-tion thereof) being mentioned 8 times in 6 dif-ferent stories, the minim 5 times in 2 different stories, the drop 4 times in 2 different stories, the fluid dram, tablespoonful (or spoonful), and the teaspoonful (or small spoonful) mentioned twice each (see Table 10).

Table 9. “Pharmacist” Mentioned in O. Henry’s Writings

Apothecary Clerk Drug Clerk Drugstore Man Druggist Eastern Orange-Phosphate-and-Massage- Cream Professors Patent Tablet-and-Granule Pharmashootists Pharmaceutist

Table 10. Doses Mentioned in O. Henry’s Writings

Cupful Minim Drop Ounce Fluid Dram Tablespoonful or Spoonful Grain (or fraction thereof) Teaspoonful or Small Spoonful

L’EnvoiToward the end of 1909, the alternating

periods of procrastination and fits of feverish energy had begun to take their toll; O. Henry had literally burnt himself out meeting his pub-lishers’ deadlines. His health shattered, he fi-nally accepted his friend Harry Steger’s advice to take a prolonged rest cure in Asheville, North Carolina, where he stayed for the next five or six months, still deluding himself that the “neuras-thenia” which had baffled his New York physi-cians for over a year could be cured with fresh air and hill climbing.45 When O. Henry returned to New York in March, 1910, he was finished and doubtless knew it, but he kept up the brave pre-tense that his creative faculties were still unim-paired. Virtually an invalid during the last few weeks of his life, he refused all company and rarely emerged from his room. He kept himself alive with whiskey until his collapse on the eve-ning of June 3; Dr. Charles Russell Hancock, who admitted him to the Polyclinic Hospital, as-sessed his condition as advanced diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver.46 O. Henry died at 7:06 a.m.., Sunday, June 5, 1910; he was halfway


through his forty-eighth year. O. Henry’s end, like Will Porter’s beginning, was touched with pathos and irony: By a final quirk of fate that he would have appreciated, his funeral service was hastily pushed along to make way for a wed-ding thoughtlessly scheduled for the same hour. Yet Bill Porter had given pleasure to millions through his stories, and he had made the name O. Henry an indelible symbol in American life—and American pharmacy.

Where once he used camphor, glycerin, Cloves, aloes, potash, peppermint in bars,And all the oils and essences so keen That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars—Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile, The master pharmacist of joy and painDispenses sadness tinctured with a smile And laughter that dissolves in tears again.

O brave apothecary! You who knew What dark and acid doses life prefers,And yet with smiling face resolved to brew These sparkling potions for your customers—Glowing with globes of red and purple glass Your window gladdens travellers who pass.47

principal from 1844-45. C. Alphonso Smith, O. Henry Biography (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1916), 43.

3. Smith adds that “a perpetual motion water-wheel, a new fangled‑churn, a washing machine, a flying ma-chine, a horseless carriage to be run by steam, and a cotton-picking contrivance that was to take the place of negro labour became obsessions with him.” Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 44. Davis and Maurice suggest that Dr. Porter had never been a practical man: “In his younger days it was his mother who saw to it that his bills were sent out,” a procedure that was considered a violation of the social conventions of the day. “It was not good form for a physician to send a statement of the amount due. The patient was supposed to settle once a year without a reminder.” Robert H. Davis and Arthur B. Maurice, The Caliph of Bagdad (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1931), 12.

4. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 7. O’Connor notes that “the doctor who turned to drugs or drink was a folk figure of nineteenth-century America.” Also see statements of Mrs. J. K. Hall and Mrs. R. M. Smith, in G. Alphonso Smith, Notes, Greensboro Public Library, cited by E. Hudson Long, in O. Henry: The Man and His Work (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949), 11 and 138.

5. Long, O. Henry (n. 4), 11.6. Eugene Current-Garcia, O. Henry (New York: Twayne

Publishers, Inc., 1965), 18-19.7. Porter’s Drug Store may not have seemed likely to

become anything more than the forum for the town’s loafers, drunkards, and philosophers in Will’s youth, yet its subsequent history made it one of the glamour spots of the proprietary drug industry. In 1891, Lun-sford Richardson bought out Clark Porter. He was “too ambitious and serious-minded to tolerate the contin-ued presence of layabouts, who were firmly expelled.” The new proprietor busied himself developing a line of nostrums called Vicks Family Remedies, one of which was Vicks Vaporub. Today, Richardson’s Vicks Chemi-cal Company is one of Greensboro’s leading industries. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 13-14.

8. Ethel Stephens Arnett, O. Henry From Polecat Creek (Greensboro, North Carolina: Piedmont Press, 1962), 147-48.

9. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 13. The originals of many of these cartoons are among the most highly prized O. Henry relics housed in the Greensboro Public Li-brary. One sketch in particular illuminates the state of morality in reconstructed North Carolina generally and the sociology of Porter’s Drug Store specifically: Uncle Clark is depicted behind his counter glumly observing two “customers” rifling his cigar case while a third stalks across the cigar‑butt‑littered floor bear-ing a liquor‑filled pitcher. Maurice and Davis note that the conversations to which Will was exposed were not the kind to inspire hero-worship: “Perhaps from these evenings dated his life-long distaste for what he called the professional Southerner.” Davis and Maurice, The Caliph of Bagdad (n. 3), 16. Thirty years later, as O. Henry, Will captured the ambiance of a drugstore in a small southern town in “The Emancipation of Billy”

Notes and References

1. Richard O’Connor, O. Henry: The Legendary Life of William S. Porter (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1970), 7.

2. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 6. Dr. Porter had qualified for his profession by clerking in a drug store under the supervision of Dr. David P. Weir, eventually learning enough about chemistry to lecture on the subject at the Edgeworth Female Seminary, of which Dr. Weir was


(Roads of Destiny, 1909).10. Gerald Langford, Alias O. Henry: A Biography of

William Sidney Porter (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957), 14-15; and Arnet, O. Henry From Polecat Creek (n. 8), 193-97.

11. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 14. Also see A. W. McAl-lister, Letter to C. A. Smith, November 25, 1914; A. W. Page, “Little Pictures of O. Henry: I,” Bookman 37 (June, 1913): 386; and Cecile Lindau, “Will Porter and Uncle Charlie,” Homespun (October, 1925); all in the O. Henry Collection, Public Library, Greensboro, North Carolina, and cited in Arnett, O. Henry From Polecat Creek (n. 8) 153-66, passim.

12. Arnett, O. Henry From Polecat Creek (n. 8), 193. Smith observed that “no profession attracted him, and there was no one in Greensboro doing anything that O. Henry would have liked to do permanently.” Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 92.

13. Both Will’s mother and maternal grandmother had died from tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was to become one of the shadows of Will’s later life: In 1887, he married Athol Estes, a young woman whose father had died of the malady, and who was to meet the same fate ten years later. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 14; and Current-Garcia, O. Henry (n. 6), 26. Of all the diseases mentioned in his writings, O. Henry seems to have written most affectingly about tuberculosis. See, for example, “A Fog in Santone” (Rolling Stones, 1912).

14. Current-Garcia, O. Henry (n. 6), 21. Will did return to Greensboro for brief visits in 1890 and 1891 after his father and grandmother died, but his few letters from that period give no indication that he felt obligated ei-ther to them or to his Aunt Lina. Ibid.; also see Arnett, O. Henry From Polecat Creek (n. 8), 201-3.

15. Edmunds Travis, “O. Henry’s Austin Years,” Bunker’s Monthly 1:4 (April, 1928): 495-96; and [Edmunds Travis], “O. Henry,” Journal of the American Phar‑maceutical Association 20:5 (May, 1931): 489.

16. Davis and Maurice, The Caliph of Bagdad (n. 3), 67; and Travis, “O. Henry’s Austin Years” (n. 14), 504. Also see Hyder E. Rollins, “O. Henry’s Texas Days, Book‑man 40 (October, 1914): 154-65. The unsystematic, indeed, highly irregular, banking practices prevalent in Austin at that time are nowhere better dramatized than in O. Henry’s own story, “Friends in San Rosario” (Roads of Destiny, 1909).

17. See, for example, Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 136-46; O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 44-47, 50, 52-55, and 64-65; or Long, O. Henry (n. 4), 78-81 and 88-99.

18. Langford, Alias O. Henry (n. 10), 112-30. Current-Gar-cia notes that those who claim that there was a miscar-riage of justice in Will’s trial “have either overlooked or ignored much damaging evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that Porter, despite his own pro-testations of innocence, deliberately took the money himself and altered his account books to conceal his theft.” Current-Garcia, O. Henry (n. 6), 33. Also see L. W. Courtney, “O. Henry’s Case Reconsidered,” American Literature 14:1 (January, 1943): 361-71, the first scholarly proof that Porter received a fair trial and was unquestionable guilty of embezzlement.

19. Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 147. “The profes-sion which he loathed in Greensboro because it meant

confinement was now, strangely enough, to prove the stepping stone to comparative freedom,” Smith com-ments.

20. Quoted in Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 153-54.21. Quoted in Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 147.22. Quoted in Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 150-51.

Dr. Willard was also the first to recognize that Jimmy Valentine, the leading character in “A Retrieved Refor-mation” (Roads of Destiny, 1909), was modeled after his day drug clerk, Jimmy Connors.

23. Quoted in Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 155-56.24. Quoted in Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 157. 25. Al Jennings, Through The Shadows With O. Henry

(London: Duckworth and Company, 1923), 222.26. Smith, O. Henry Biography (n. 2), 154.27. Three stories—“Money Maze” (Cabbages and Kings,

1904), “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking” (Roads of Destiny, 1909), and “Georgia’s Ruling” (Whirligigs, 1910)—were published while Porter was in prison. The others, published later, include “Rouge et Noir” (Cab‑bages and Kings, 1904), “Hygeia at the Solito” and “An Afternoon Miracle” (Heart of the West, 1907), “The Enchanted Kiss” (Roads of Destiny, 1909), “No Story” (Options, 1909), “A Blackjack Bargainer,” “A Chapar-ral Christmas Gift,” and “A Medley of Moods” [sub nom. “Blind Man’s Holiday”] (Whirligigs, 1910), “The Duplicity of Hargraves”’ (Sixes and Sevens, 1911), “The Marionettes” and “A Fog in Santone” (Rolling Stones, 1912). The stories Porter had written in prison were submitted through an intermediary in New Orleans, so the editors had no idea that O. Henry, author, was also Will Porter, convict. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 82.

28. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 82. Bill sought a reunion with his daughter, Margaret, and his in-laws, Mr. and Mrs. P. G. Roach, who managed the Hotel.

29. Davis and Maurice, The Caliph of Bagdad (n. 3), 168-69. Almost thirty years later, Jamison remem-bered his roommate as “a mighty fine fellow”: “I was then in my last year at the Pittsburgh College of Pharmacy. I had lots of room and didn’t mind shar-ing it with Bill. We occupied the same bed—one of those high old walnut fellows—and together, when necessary, fought the insect life.” Charles F. Danver, “Pittsburghesque,” Pittsburgh Post‑Gazette, March 28, 1930, cited by Davis and Maurice, The Caliph of Bagdad (n. 3), 169.

30. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 85-86.31. Current-Garcia, O. Henry, (n. 6), [6].32. See Letters to Lithopolis from O. Henry to Mabel

Wagnalls (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922). Mabel was the daughter of Adam Wagnalls, co‑founder of the Funk & Wagnall Publish-ing Company.

33. Will Porter worked on the Houston Post from October 18, 1895 to June 22, 1896; the identification of his work was made through internal characteristics.

34. O. Henry’s short stories and poems appeared in 34 different magazines between 1899 and 1910; they were eventually issued in the 13 volumes listed in Table 1 under the aegis of Doubleday, Page and Company, New York. See Paul S. Clarkson, A Bibliography of William Sydney Porter (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1938), the most exhaustive listing of works by and


Appendix A. O. Henry Stories Containing Pharmaceutical Allusions by Volume1

Cabbages and Kings (1904)The Proem: By the CarpenterThe AdmiralSmithThe Four Million (1906)A Service of LoveThe Love-Philtre of Ikey SchoensteinMan About TownSpringtime à la CarteThe Cop and the AnthemAn Unfinished Story

The Trimmed Lamp (1907)The Rubaiyat of a Scotch HighballThe Lost Blend The Pendulum A Harlem TragedyThe Assessor of Success“The Guilty Party”The Making of a New YorkerA Midsummer Knight’s DreamThe Social TriangleThe Last LeafThe Purple DressThe Foreign Policy of Company 99The Country of ElusionThe Count and the Wedding GuestThe Tale of a Tainted Tenner

Heart of the West (1907)Telemachus, FriendThe Spinx AppleThe Handbook of Hymen

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley JohnsonThe Higher AbdicationChristmas by Injunction Cupid à la Carte

The Voice of the City (1908)“Little Speck in Garnered Fruit”Nemesis and the Candy Man The Harbinger The City of Dreadful NightA Comedy in RubberThe Easter of the Sou1 The Defeat of the City The Fool‑KillerThe Plutonian Fire From Each According to His Ability

The Gentle Grafter (1908)The Octopus MaroonedConscience in ArtJeff Peters as a Personal MagnetThe Man Higher UpModern Rural SportsA Tempered Wind Innocents of Broadway

Roads of Destiny (1909)“Next to Reading Matter”The Emancipation of BillyArt and the BroncoThe Enchanted Kiss The Passing of Black Eagle

about O. Henry, though incomplete.35. See The Complete Works of O. Henry. Foreword by

William Lyon Phelps (New York: Garden City Publish-ing Co., Inc., 1937).

36. “‘Next to Reading Matter,’” (Roads of Destiny, 1909), The Complete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 390.

37. “A Ramble in Aphasia” (Strictly Business, 1910), The Complete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 1545.

38. “The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear” (Rolling Stones, 1912), The Complete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 959.

39. “The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein” (The Four Million, 1906), The Complete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 50.

40. “The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein” (The Four Million, 1906), The Complete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 49-50.

41. “A Fog in Santone” (Rolling Stones, 1912), The Com‑plete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 992.

42. “The Pendulum” (The Trimmed Lamp, 1907), The Complete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 1384.

43. “He Also Serves” (Options, 1909), ibid., 749.44. “A Night in New Arabia” (Strictly Business, 1910), The

Complete Works of O. Henry, (n. 35), 1594-95.45. Current-Garcia, O. Henry (n. 6), 46. O. Henry’s experi-

ence with physicians is captured in the frankly auto-biographical story “Let Me Feel Your Pulse” (Sixes and Sevens, 1911). See O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 202-3.

46. O’Connor, O. Henry (n. 1), 229. His liver was all wrong, his digestion was shattered, his nerves were in a ter-rible condition, and his heart was too weak to stand the shock,” Dr. Hancock told newspaper reporters. New York Tribune, June 6, 1910, quoted by Long, O. Henry (n. 4), 134.

47. Christopher Morley, “O. Henry—Apothecary,” Every‑body’s Magazine 36:2 (February, 1917), p. 166.


On Behalf of the ManagementThe Fourth in Salvador

Options (1909)Thimble, Thimble The Head-HunterTo Him Who WaitsNo Story He Also Serves

Strictly Business (1910)Strictly BusinessCompliments of the SeasonThe Gold That GlitteredA Night in New Arabia Babes in the JungleProof of the PuddingThe Girl and the Graft Past One at Rooney’s The Call of the TameThe Duel A Ramble in Aphasia“What You Want” A Municipal Report

Whirligigs (1910)The World and the DoorThe Marry Month of MayThe Theory and the HoundOne Dollar’s Worth A Matter of Mean ElevationA Little Local ColorThe Ransom of Red Chief

Sixes and Sevens (1911)Witches’ LoavesThe Church with an Overshot-Wheel Makes the Whole World KinThe Adventures of Shamrock JolnesAt Arms with MorpheusLaw and Order The Door of UnrestThe Day We Celebrate Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Rolling Stones (1912)The DreamThe Friendly CallA Ruler of MenA Snapshot at the PresidentThe Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

An Unfinished Christmas StoryHelping the Other FellowA Strange Story The MarionettesAn ApologyA Fog in SantoneLord Oakhurst’s Curse

Waifs and Strays (1917)The Rubber Plant’s Story

O. Henryana (1920)2

Three ParagraphsThe Elusive Tenderloin A Professional Secret

Letters to Lithopolis (1922)3

[No allusions contained in this volume]

Postscripts (1923)4

The Other Side of ItA Slight MistakeBuying a PianoCharge of the White Brigade His DilemmaComing to HimLeap Year AdviceThe Shock Hush MoneyCalculationsAn X‑Ray FableA Cheery ThoughtGuessed Everything ElseA Narrow Escape

O. Henry Encore (1939)5

A Night ErrantAn Odd CharacterIn MezzotintA New Microbe The Mirage on the FrioA Story for MenA Strange CaseBarbershop Adventure Simmon’s Saturday Night“Watchman, What of the Night?”

Notes

1. The first fourteen volumes may be found in The Com‑plete Works of O. Henry. Foreword by William Lyon


Phelps (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1937).

2. O. Henryana: Seven Odds and Ends. Poetry and Short Stories by O. Henry (Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1920).

3. Letters to Lithopolis from O. Henry to Mabel Wag‑nalls (Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922).

Armstrong Cork Co., Lancaster, Pennsylvania, developed a display card for their Phenix Rx ware to acquaint pharmacy customers with their prescription glassware. The company originally manufactured corks as bottle closures, but moved into producing metal or molded plastic caps once corks went out of fashion. By 1942 they introduced their amber glass Phenix prescription and flint glass Label-Rite bottles.1 (Photo courtesy AIHP Drug Topics Collection.)1. George Griffenhagen and Mary Bogard, History of Drug Containers and their Labels (AIHP, 1999), p. 97.

4. O. Henry, Postscripts. With an Introduction by Flor-ence Stratton (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1923).

5. O. Henry Encore. Stories and Illustrations by O. Henry Usually Under the Name “The Post Man.” Discovered and Edited by Mary Sunlocks Harrell (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1939).


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The Pharmaceutical Symbolism of O. Henry

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