A place where medicines and medical supplies are given out or sold, often run by a pharmacist or medical professional.
From Latin 'dispensare' (to distribute or weigh out) combined with the suffix '-ary' (a place for). The word evolved in the 1600s to describe medical facilities that dispensed remedies to patients.
Dispensaries were revolutionary in the 1700s-1800s because they made medicine accessible to poor people for the first time—before that, only the wealthy could afford individual doctors and apothecaries.
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