The work of pharmacy institutions in the USSR in the first period of the Great Patriotic War

This article presents an analysis of the state of the pharmacy business in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War in the peri­od 1941–1942, characterized by difficulties in supplying the army and the civilian population with medicines, the loss of a huge number of pharmacy institutions and warehouses at the beginning of the war. As a result, the supply of a number of medicines for the front and rear was completely stopped. The features of the work of pharmacists in military hospitals, civilian institutions in the country and in Len­ingrad are considered separately. The wide use of medicinal plants to fill the shortage of raw materials in the manufacture of medicines is shown. The measures taken made it possible to minimize the shortcomings in the provision of medicines and dressings and made it pos­sible for the pharmacy network to withstand the war.