The papers are divided into five series: BACKGROUND MATERIALS, PERSONAL PAPERS, GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE, ORGANIZATIONS, and SPEECHES AND WRITINGS.
BACKGROUND MATERIALS include various forms of biographical information about Fischelis and his interests and activities. His ideas and professional advocacy were informed by his wide range of knowledge of pharmacy itself and the fields affecting it, such as business, economics, government regulation, and general health and welfare matters. The oral histories concern his work with the CCMC, the FDA, and the New Jersey College of Pharmacy. (The CCMC tape itself is at the National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division.) His personal library, which is inventoried here, attests to the depth and breadth of his interests and information sources. Although very incomplete, the professional miscellany indicates his many activities and roles and the number, intense pace, and variety of his schedule. His speeches and writings and correspondence relating to these activities will be found in the other series. A more complete picture of his activities can be found in pharmaceutical journals, especially JAPhA PPE, Drug Trade Weekly and American Druggist.
The photographs consist of formal and informal photographs of Fischelis, his wife, and their families. The subjects include Fischelis' career, his governmental consultancies, organizational and association work, and Remington Medal award dinner.
The PERSONAL PAPERS reflect Fischelis' role as family member, student, husband, alumnus, and social organization member. The correspondence between Fischelis and Juanita Deer, mainly from their meeting in 1917 to 1921, are affectionate and chatty, and include some views on the social and political affairs of the times.
The Deer family material contains some personal correspondence, but most is of a business nature. The family held some property, and Fischelis looked after his mother-in-law's affairs in her later years. Much of the correspondence relates to the sale of an Ohio farm that had been in the family for many years. Also included are family genealogies compiled by Juanita's mother, Carrie Reid Deer.
The Fischelis family material is made up of correspondence with his parents Philipp and Ernestine, sisters Marie, Anna, and Alice, brothers Bert and William, and nephew Robert L. The correspondence with the family reveals his “big brother” role and the conflicting emotions they often felt towards each other. The arrangement is alphabetical by correspondent.
Because of his intense involvement in his career, Fischelis had very few friends outside his career. While there is some social correspondence with friends, many were originally early professional or school acquaintances. This section is arranged chronologically.
The Organizations section includes the many social, alumni, and fraternal organizations to which Fischelis belonged, many of them based on pharmaceutical interests. Prominent among these are all his school alumni organizations; Beta Phi Sigma, Kappa Psi, and Rho Chi pharmaceutical fraternities; the Rotary Club, and the Chemists' Club. Arrangement is alphabetical, and files consist of correspondence, programs, announcements and other ephemeral materials. (Documented in the ORGANIZATIONS series are groups for which there is substantial material, usually ones for which Fischelis worked either on a fulltime or parttime basis over a number of years or had active and extensive leadership roles, such as the PPA and NJPhA.)
The Education section contains papers from elementary to graduate school. The elementary years consist largely of class projects and compositions, while high school and college materials are made up of lecture notes, examinations, and an occasional grade report. Most of the college material is from Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia, and includes yearbooks. It is unclear whether some courses documented were taken as a student or taught.
There are also a few personal financial, legal, insurance, and medical records and letters of complaint, indicating the private life of a man who lived mostly in the public eye.
Fischelis' professional activities are documented in two series: GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE and ORGANIZATIONS. Groups, persons and subjects represented by smaller amounts of materials are documented in the GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE series. Together these series document the full range of his lifelong
interests and activities, and his career as journalist, fair trade advocate, leader in pharmaceutical organizations, consultant and liaison to various governmental bodies, and spokesman for pharmacy as a profession akin to medicine. They depict his wide-ranging activities and impassioned (sometimes embattled) advocacy. These records indicate that he played a less active philosophical and practical leadership role in the years after his retirement from the APhA in 1959. Both series are organized alphabetically by organization name. The larger categories are subdivided into name and subject files. (The researcher is cautioned that Fischelis often wrote to the same person in several different capacities, sometimes in the same letter.)
The GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE series is arranged alphabetically and spans his entire career, except for his years as executive secretary of the APhA, when his other activities were limited. His role in establishing and later modifying the federal Food and Drug Act is documented here, as is his freelance work for many pharmaceutical journals and book publishers, his consulting work for various federal agencies, his ongoing relationships with officers of the NABP and NARD, his work with the Pharmaceutical Syllabus Committee, and as lecturer at PCPS and George Washington University. Among the many individuals, organizations, agencies, and companies, Fischelis' correspondence with H.V. Arny, Hugo Schaefer and Ernest Little indicate his few, close relationships, most dating from his early career, in which he more candidly discusses his views and analyses of situations.
The papers in the ORGANIZATIONS series focus on Fischelis' activities and interests, and are not a complete record of the organization itself.
This series consists mainly of correspondence; some subject files; mimeograph mailings, bulletins and reports; and scattered minutes and reports of meetings and committees in which Fischelis himself was involved. Subseries consisting of mainly these types of materials are the Conference of Pharmaceutical Law Enforcement Officials, the National Drug Trade Conference and National Pharmacy Committee on Relations with the Health Professions, the New Jersey Board of Health, the New Jersey Board of Pharmacy, the NJPhA, the News Edition, the PPA, and the Metric Association. Although Fischelis had a lifelong interest in the Metric Association, his papers mainly concern his presidency and more active work after his retirement from APhA in the 1960s.
The largest section of the ORGANIZATIONS series contains the APhA papers, which document his long involvement with this association. They are mainly correspondence, but include some reports, minutes, and questionnaires. They reveal Fischelis' active personal role in every phase of the association's activities and its relations with other organizations. The interoffice memos and correspondence with his staff reflect a managerial style of personal involvement and final arbiter in all matters large and small. The APhA subseries is divided alphabetically into the general headings Name files (for individuals and organizations) and Subject files. They include both Fischelis' own files and “personal” material removed from the APhA files after his retirement (with permission from his successor William Apple). Some further records of Fischelis' tenure as executive secretary are in the APhA Archive at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Some other subseries also include additional information. The Committee on the Cost of Medical Care papers contain research materials and annotated manuscripts for The Costs of Medicine and “The Service of Pharmacy” study.
The papers from the commercial companies Maltbie, Merrell, and Mulford, include advertising and promotional campaign copy and brochures, interesting examples of the products and methods used by pharmaceutical companies from about 1915-1925. The subseries which focus on Fischelis' role in pharmaceutical education and its development are the New Jersey College of Pharmacy records, the Ohio Northern University records, and the ACPE records, which also contain reports on school inspections he made.
The subseries concerning federal government agencies document the research, formation, implementation, and implications of governmental regulation and Fischelis' involvement in this process. These include the National Recovery Act drug codes files; the War Production Board files; the HEW Bureau of Family Services files, which also include the state-by-state survey of medical welfare policies carried out by Fischelis; and the Kefauver hearings, which also include the testimony by Fischelis, and extensive notes for his editorial column.
SPEECHES AND WRITINGS are arranged by chronological period. A few files also contain drafts and resource materials. Some partial bibliographies are included, along with some folders of research materials gathered for undetermined purposes, which indicate the range of reading and research in which Fischelis engaged.
