Be sure to check out the Abe M. Plough Foundation collection on the 2nd floor of the College of Pharmacy Building! This collection features every product distributed and created by Plough Incorporated, which was founded by Memphis-based entrepreneur Abe M. Plough in 1908. It is the only known complete collection of pharmaceutical items produced by Plough Incorporated, which became Schering-Plough in 1971.
The collection was compiled by Abe Plough, nephew of Abe M. Plough, in an effort to preserve his family’s legacy. While he received an extensive assortment of artifacts from the Plough Foundation and other family members, a significant part of the collection was gathered by Abe the younger over many years, searching thrift stores for bottles, pills, and packaging that bear the Plough family name. Now part of the UT Health Science Center’s Alumni Museum, it showcases pharmacy antiques dating back to the 1800s!
A huge thanks to Abe Plough for preserving Memphis Pharmacy’s history with this unique collection of artifacts.
About Abe M. Plough
Within a year of his birth in 1892 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Abe Plough moved with his family to Memphis, where his father Moses operated a clothing and furnishings store. Abe Plough attended Market Street School where a teacher taught him to calculate figures without pencil or paper. He said this “mental arithmetic” served him well in his business career since he never needed a pencil to calculate his acquisition of thirty companies for the Schering-Plough Corporation at a cost of over $1 billion.
Twentieth century photograph collection, Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries
Plough received his only other formal education at St. Paul Street Grammar School, from which he graduated. After school and on weekends he worked at the George V. Francis drug store without pay because he wanted to learn the drug business, determined that it would be his future. Moses Plough lent his son $125 to start his own business, Plough Chemical Company, in 1908. At age sixteen Abe Plough was owner, manager, and only employee of the new business, located in one small room above his father’s store. Using dishpans for mixing the chemicals, his first formula was for Plough’s Antiseptic Healing Oil, a “sure cure for any ill of man or beast.” On days when he was not bottling his healing oil, Plough set out in his father’s horse-drawn buggy to sell his product to drug stores and country merchants.
Success came almost immediately for the new enterprise. Within two years it doubled in size, entered the patent drug business, and branched out into cosmetics. Adding aspirin to his line of products in 1920, Plough bought the St. Joseph Company, a step he called his “first on the road to the big time.”
Despite the worldwide depression in 1929, Plough raised his employees’ salaries and added one hundred others to his drug store and factory labor forces. Plough, Incorporated, moved in 1951 to 3022 Jackson Avenue, a $2 million plant encompassing 250,000 square feet on six acres of land. The business reported net sales of $254.5 million by 1954, a figure that doubled by 1962. It merged in 1971 with Schering Corporation, primarily a manufacturer of prescription pharmaceuticals. Plough was Chairman of both Plough, Incorporated, and Schering-Plough.
Plough retired from business in 1976 to devote his talents and energies to his other chief interest, philanthropy. His generosity to the community is legendary. His many gifts were often made as “challenge grants,” his stated goal “to help the greatest number of people in order to do the most good.”
His legacy lives on not only in the business he created, which bears his name, but also in his deeds of generosity and leadership. The Plough Foundation continues to be devoted to the welfare of the community and is administered in his name by his heirs.
Plough retired from business in 1976 to devote his talents and energies to his other chief interest, philanthropy. His generosity to the community is legendary. His many gifts were often made as “challenge grants,” his stated goal “to help the greatest number of people in order to do the most good.” His legacy lives on not only in the business he created, which bears his name, but also in his deeds of generosity and leadership. The Plough Foundation continues to be devoted to the welfare of the community and is administered in his name by his heirs.
This biography of Mr. Plough was authored by Selma Lewis in The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.
About the UT Health Science Center Alumni Museum
The Plough Collection is part of the UT Health Science Center College of Pharmacy Alumni Museum, which houses items from the history of pharmacy at the College of Pharmacy Building in Memphis.
From “History of The UTHSC College of Pharmacy Alumni Museum” by Jim Eoff, PharmD, Professor Emeritus UT Health Science Center College of Pharmacy
The University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center College of Pharmacy located in Memphis Tennessee has one of the most extensive treasured collections of pharmacy antiques in the country, some of which date back to the early 1800’s. The College of Pharmacy building on the University of
Tennessee Health Sciences Center campus was completed in August 2011 and included a space dedicated on the first floor to replicate an old fashion drug store in which to display the pharmacy antiques donated to the College.
There are also many displays on each of the six floors of the building
including built-in display cases next to the elevators on the five upper floors, and antique pharmacy cases on the central bridges across the open atrium of each floor between the offices and the research labs of the building. In addition, three of the largest conference rooms located on the 2nd, 4th and 6th floor have large built-in glass cabinets for display of pharmacy antiques.
The most significant aspect of the story or the origins of the UT Pharmacy Alumni Museum is the first fund raising project of the College of Pharmacy Alumni resulted in the purchase of the Jillian Pharmacy Museum, and occurred prior to having a formal College of Pharmacy Alumni Association. The historical effort of many pharmacy leaders of that time has positioned the College to have one of the most complete collections of antique pharmacy artifacts in the country.