BARTLETT

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RANDALL, CLIDE: Clide Randall's mother was a pharmacist, and even though he started out as a chiropractor, in 1907 he apprenticed under her, passed the Kansas State Board of Pharmacy's exam in 1908 and quickly opened his own drug store in Bartlett, KS, down by the Oklahoma border in the southeast.  In 1915 and 1916, he had a partner with the last name of Graham (no first name yet) and named the drug store the R and G Drug Co.  His brother Merle was also a druggist, and in 1915, they bought a drug store in Fulton, KS, (over by the Missouri border) and put Merle in charge.  Pharmacists (or druggists) have always been the most accessible health professional in the community, and often a dispenser of general knowledge, as well as medications.  That was certainly the case in 1916, when a customer brought in a large leech in a jar to have the druggist identify the species.  Druggist Randall pronounced it a Russian leech, which was usually 4 inches long.  The specimen examined was 4-1/2 inches, but the customer claimed that when he found it stretched out trying to climb the river bank, it was 16 inches long!  Information for this came from an article written by Dr. Jack Fincham in the journal "Pharmacy in History" in 2010, and the Bartlett News in Bartlett, KS, in 1915 and 1916.