Stocking and providing medical office supplies has traditionally been one of the duties of a hospital dispensary, which is mainly dedicated to dispensing medication according to doctors’ prescriptions. These days, the term “dispensary” refers to a handful of different institutions around the world – or, even, within the country.
For example, in California a dispensary is a specially designated store licensed to sell not medical office supplies but medicinal marijuana (which is also the case in the Canadian province of British Columbia), while in the states of Idaho and South Carolina a dispensary used to refer to the governmental agency that served as the only legal source of alcohol.
Also no source of medical office supplies is the Kenyan dispensary, a small outpatient health facility normally managed by a registered nurse. These nurses report to clinical officers at a health centre, which is also where patients are referred to for treatment in cases more complicated than a common ailment like cold or malaria. Modeled on the British system, this sort of medical dispensary is no simple storehouse of supplies but what Americans would call a community clinic.
This kind of clinic or dispensary got its start in London, England back in the 1700s, and is credited with aquainting physicians with the problems of the poor because unlike the case with hospitals or a private practice, this dispensary service really brought doctors into their patients’ homes. Their social consciences shocked, thus were the first dispensaries set up – free healthcare for the poor.
Indeed, young aspiring physicians of the day had been really eager to serve as honorary physicians to the dispensaries, though such an appointment was normally voluntary (with no more than a small honorarium at best) and not as prestigious as a hospital posting. It was nothing short of a health care revolution: for the first time since the Hippocratic Oath, altruistic motivations were the norm.