DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company was a pharmaceutical research and manufacturing plant formed in 1991 through the joint venture of the DuPont Pharmaceutical Company and Merck & Co., a leading competitor in the pharmaceutical industry. The records consist of items taken from the files of Josephine K. Baker, clinical research coordinator. They are primarily the sort of materials issued to employees, including annual and quarterly reports and employee newsletters.

Lanman & Kemp was a multi-generational family firm of wholesale druggists in New York City. Their records document the operations of the wholesale drug business in the years before the development of modern pharmaceuticals. They also show the importance of New York City as a center for the import, export and re-export business and of London bankers in financing international trade and extending credit.

Two nineteenth-century pharmacists formula books, one from William King (1823-1903), of Philadelphia, and one from Edward S. Townsend (1844-1913), of Philadelphia and Dover, Delaware. William King was a Philadelphia druggist and worked in the oil business, first as a jobber and then as a refiner. Edward S. Townsend was a druggist in Philadelphia and Delaware.

Owl Drug Company was a chain of apothecary retail stores that sold drugs and patent medicines at a reduced cost. The company also sold candy, soda, Kodak film, stationery, cosmetics, perfumes, and other toiletries. The first store opened in June 1892 at 1128 Market Street, San Francisco, California, advertised as the "Drug Palace of the Pacific Coast." The album consists of images of displays of items sold in the drug store, specifically the 5th and Broadway location in Los Angeles, which opened for business on January 2, 1904. The 5th and Broadway location was the fifth store of the company. The photographs are countertop and shop window merchandise displays. A few images consist of print advertisements and operational charts.

Sara Armstrong Mahler (1930-2004) was a pediatric doctor and an executive in the Clinical Division at the DuPont Pharmaceutical Company from 1964 to 2001, where she was involved in both the domestic and foreign development and approval of drugs and radiopharmaceutical imaging products. Mahler invented Symmetrel, an antiviral therapy initially used to treat influenza until widespread drug resistance developed; however, it is still an effective treatment for Parkinson's Disease. This small collection consists of two items related to her time at the DuPont Pharmaceutical Company and her invention of Symmetrel. There is one newspaper clipping and one prescription, the first prescription issued for Symmetrel in 1967.

Scheiffelin & Co. was a leading pharmaceutical and liquor-importing house in New York City. The records consist of a fragmentary series of account books from the firm of H.H. Schieffelin & Co. and its predecessors. Record types include day books, journals, order books, invoice books, and inventories, all documenting the importation and resale of drugs in use in the early nineteenth century.