Dr. Arnold Whitney Matthews
Director and Professor of Pharmacology
1942-1946 , School of Pharmacy
University of Alberta
Dr. A.W. Matthews, Director and Professor, School of Pharmacy was credited with "doing the impossible" with Canada's first large-scale production of the medicinal plant belladonna in 1943. He started growing the medicinal plant belladonna after drug companies were forced to start rationing it during the Second World War.
Though widely regarded as unsafe, belladonna is used today as a sedative, to stop bronchial spasms in asthma and whooping cough, and as a cold and hay fever remedy. It is also used for Parkinson's disease, colic, motion sickness and as a painkiller.
Alberta's soil and climate combined with the ingenuity and hard work of Matthews yielded his first harvest of 750 pounds per acre yield, comparable to that obtained under ideal conditions in a large research project that was being carried out in the eastern United States.
More on the Edmonton Journal's 'Day in History' story
*Dr. A.W. Matthews was one of the three members of the University's first pharmacy degree class in 1921. He joined the faculty of the University's pharmacy school in 1923 and in 1941 became the first Canadian pharmacy faculty member to be granted the PhD degree, which he earned at the University of Florida.
Related to the story:
Matthew's assistant, Dr. Mervyn J. Huston helped him plant and care for the 5,000 plants that made up the first harvest. He was next to lead the school as Director in 1946 and then the Dean when the pharmacy school gained faculty status in 1955. Huston went on to lead the school for 32 years.
More on Huston who brought the U of A pharmacy school into the modern era and built it to national prominence