The association’s annual meetings quickly became a major event, attracting politicians and celebrities to hobnob with the elite of Connecticut’s pharmacy community. Indeed, no less a figure than P.T. Barnum himself—the Greatest Showman—and first president of Bridgeport Hospital, was the guest of honor at the 1882 annual meeting in Bridgeport. He invited the attendees to visit his world-famous extravaganza, but warned them that “if you linger too long where the animals are the odor will stay with you for weeks.”
