JEFFRY SCOTT / arizona daily star

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Once upon a time in Downtown Tucson there was the Owl Drug Store and a loyal customer who had an annoying habit of sticking his used Blackjack gum under the counter before lunch.

But John Dillinger had a look that discouraged rebuke.

Now a jar of the infamous bank robber's old gum is one of the exhibits at the History of Pharmacy Museum at the University of Arizona.

Located in the pharmacy building on the northeast side of campus, the museum isn't traditional — its exhibits are crammed into every nook and cranny available on each of the four floors, ranging from small glass-fronted cases to entire old pharmacy interiors dating to before Arizona became a state.

"It all worked out very well," said Richard Wiedhopf, assistant dean for finance and administration for the College of Pharmacy and curator of the museum. He has been the curator since 1982, the same year the museum and the college moved to their current location.

Recently, the museum received a donation of about 700 pieces from the Upjohn pharmacy, part of Main Street, USA, in Disneyland. Due to lack of space in the building, the samples will be used for the museum branch opening soon in Phoenix, part of the new UA College of Pharmacy opening there.

The museum originally opened in 1966 in the old pharmacy and microbiology building. It contained the collection of Jesse Hurlbut, a pharmacist and an inspector for the state pharmacy board in the 1930s.

"He was always a collector," Wiedhopf said. "He amassed this huge collection of Arizona-related pharmacy stuff and kept it at his ranch until he donated the collection."

Hurlbut's estate was donated to the museum after the death of his wife, providing the museum with an even larger collection — and money to display it.

Using "a cadre of really great cabinetmakers and carpenters," at the UA, the museum restored and built period facsimiles to hold the collection of containers, books and other artifacts. They also restored large equipment and pieces of old pharmacies. The new building was designed with spaces on each floor for the collection.

The museum tells more than just the history of pharmacy in Arizona: It's a regional look at pharmacy for the last century.

"In small towns they were the place to hang out," Wiedhopf said.

The dispensing of medicine has changed a lot. Wiedhopf explained how when he graduated from the college in 1965, "pharmacists used to be hidden." They couldn't label the drugs they were giving patients, and prescriptions were in Latin as part of the idea that "the patient doesn't need to know," he said.

Ornate glass containers full of red or green fluid hang from the ceiling and abound throughout the museum.The old-fashioned show globes were a longtime symbol of a pharmacy, much as the striped pole is the symbol for barbers.

Once used to denote whether a town was under quarantine from disease, the show globes eventually became associated with apothecaries and alchemists until very recently.

Many of the medicine jars still contain some of their original contents, mostly long past any effectiveness, but they provide a fascinating look at how chemicals and plants were kept at the time, with names very different from those used today.

Pharmacists used to have to create medicine from raw materials, rather than receiving everything pre-manufactured. A Lloyd continuous extraction machine, a truly monstrous complexity, is on display, and was used throughout the middle of the 20th century to make oils, perfumes, and even for research into plants to fight cancer, Wiedhopf said.

Some of the displays are only nominally related to medicine; ads and examples of patent medicines and nostrums abound. Being 20-30 percent alcohol, "they did relax you," Wiedhopf said.

The oldest exhibit, and Wiedhopf's favorite, is the frontispiece of a pharmacy built in 1870 and used in Columbus, N.M., until the fateful attack by Pancho Villa and his men in 1916. The piece was then used in the Tombstone Drug Store until being donated to the museum.

A lot of the collection is unseen due to its sheer size. The university takes all worthwhile donations but cannot throw out or sell any of it, so the memorabilia accumulates.

John Murphy, associate dean of academic and professional affairs and professor of pharmacy practice and science, said the museum is "a fantastic showpiece of the college" and that he sees people enjoying the exhibits all the time.

His favorite pieces are the bits of historical pharmacies. But he said others have their own preferences.

"How could you not love seeing Dillinger's gum?" he asked.