Retiring Susanville Druggist Looking Back on 32 Years of Various Changes
January 10, 1946
With the longest continuous business record on Main street of any living Susanville merchant, William M. Bryant, for the first time since 1913 in not in business, having sold his interest in Bryant’s Drug Store to his two partners, Ardel Torrey and S. W. McMahon, as of Jan. 1st.
There have been many changes in the drug business since the day he and J. M. Ramsey opened the drug store in Susanville. Back then the druggist was more of a manufacturing chemist and patent medicine dispenser. He stocked, maybe two or three kinds of tooth pastes, and a couple of articles by a few perfume makers. Today he had 30 dentifrices, and a dozen odors by a dozen perfumers.
“Since then the serums came in; now we have the sulfa and penicillin, and the patient gets well in days instead of weeks. Drugs cost more today, but because of better drugs and more effective ones, the overall cost today is a lot less.” Bryant Says.
“There have been more changes in the retail drug business than in any other I know. That’s one thing I have liked, keeping up on what’s new on what Susanville folks need and the like.”
A Rexall store from the start, Bryant’s has a national distinction. It was given the Rexall charter for this territory before the store was opened, due to the friendship of Bryant and the company president.
Asked what they plan to call it the business, McMahon and Torrey answered: “Why, Bryant’s of course. Nothing else we could call it.”
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