Abstract
The foundation for the pharmaceutical industry in the United States was laid in Philadelphia between 1818 and 1822 with the establishment of half a dozen enduring fine chemical manufacturers.1 America had formerly been dependent on Britain for most of its medicines, as for other manufactured products. With the economic disorder created by the war of 1812 and its aftermath, this pattern of dependence was broken. Since importation was disrupted and high tariffs were levied on those goods which did get through, it became easier and more profitable to manufacture many products than to ship them from England.2
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Notes
In this short period of growth after the economic disruption of the war of 1812–15, coupled with the decline in British commerce as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, a large number of manufacturing firms were established, including the predecessors of some of the major chemical manufacturers of the end of the century. Three companies later to form the Philadelphia base of Sharp and Dohme (subsequently Merck and Company) date from this period: Farr and Kunzi (1818), Powers and Weightman (1818) and Rosengarten and Sons (1821/22). The Marshall Drug Store, which had been established at the end of the previous century, grew into a manufacturing house at this time and led a wave of conversions from retail pharmacies to wholesale and manufacturing businesses, and Charles V. Hagner operated a ‘drug mill’ starting in 1812, but it was not until 1817 that he began producing his more significant products, verdigris and white lead, for which he received process patents in that year. John and Daniel Elliott began their fine chemical manufacturing in 1819. See: J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia 1609–1884 (Philadelphia: L. H. Evans, 1884) p. 2234;
John J. MacFarlane, Manufacturing in Philadelphia 1683–1912 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Commercial Museum, 1912) pp. 63–4.
See also Edward Kremers and George Urdang, History of Pharmacy, 4th ed. (Philadephia: Lippincott, 1976) pp. 181–212, 226–31, 326–35;
and John Thomas Mahoney, The Merchants of Life. An Account of the American Pharmaceutical Industry (New York: Harper, 1959) pp. 30–1.
The best general source on pharmacy in Philadelphia is Joseph W. England (ed.) The First Century of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy 1821–1921 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, 1922).
In aggregate, the profits of drug makers have been high during the entire period over which the US census has counted income. United States Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of Manufacturers (Washington: US Census Office, 1880).
Williams Haynes, American Chemical Industry, vol. 1 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1954) p. 211.
For example, Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Therapeutics from the Primitives to the Twentieth Century (New York: Hafner, 1973) p. 99, identifies a constant close connection between drugs and either rational theory or empiricism in the early nineteenth century, but one only has to look at the popular patent medicines to see that the connection with either theory or experience was often highly tenuous.
See James Harvey Young, American Self-Dosage Medicines. An Historical Perspective (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1974) pp. 1–13;
also J. H. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires. A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961).
Charles E. Rosenberg, ‘The Therapeutic Revolution: Medicine, Meaning and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America’, in Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg (eds) The Therapeutic Revolution, Essays in the Social History of American Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979) pp. 7–9.
See George Rosen, Fees and Fee Bills (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1946) pp. 1–3.
Also William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century, From Sects to Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972) pp. 63–4.
Foremost, see Rosenberg, ‘Therapeutic Revolution.’ See also Gert Brieger, ‘Therapeutic Conflict and the American Medical Profession in the 1860s’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 41 (1967) pp. 215–23. For a general history of the shift from heroic therapeutics, see Ackerknecht, Therapeutics, pp. 118–19. Also Alex Berman, ‘The Heroic Approach in 19th Century Therapeutics’, Bulletin of the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (1954) pp. 320–7; Guenter B. Risse, ‘The Brownian System of Medicine: Its Theoretical and Practical Implications’, Clio Medica, 5 (1970) pp. 45–51;
Harris L. Coulter, Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, 3 vols, (Washington, DC: American Institute of Homeopathy, 1973); Rothstein, American Physicians, pp. 41–55, 152–74, 230–246;
Joseph F. Kett, The Formation of the American Medical Profession. The Role of Institutions, 1780–1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968) pp. 132–64;
John S. Haller, ‘The Use and Abuse of Tartar Emetic in the 19th Century Materia Medica’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 49 (1975) pp. 235–57;
Guenter B. Risse, ‘The Renaissance of Bloodletting: A Chapter in Modern Therapeutics’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 34 (1979) pp. 3–22;
John Harley Warner, ‘“The Nature-Trusting Heresy”: American Physicians and the Concept of the Healing Power of Nature in the 1850s and 1860s’, Perspectives in American History, 11 (1977–78) pp. 298–324;
and John Harley Warner, ‘Physiological Theory and Therapeutic Explanation in the 1860s: The British Debate on the Medical Use of Alcohol’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 54 (1980) pp. 235–57; and ‘Therapeutic Explanation and the Edinburgh Bloodletting Controversy: Two Perspectives on the Medical Meaning of Science in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, Medical History (1980) pp. 241–58.
Kremers and Urdang, History of Pharmacy, p. 180. J. R. Lothrop, ‘Verdict Against an Apothecary for an Alleged Mistake in Putting up a Prescription’, Buffalo Medical and Surgical Journal, 6 (1886–7) pp. 85, 117, 343; ‘Important Action by the Philadelphia County Medical Society in Relation to Certain Objectionable Practices by Druggists, Injurious to the Interests of Medical Practitioners’, College and Clinical Record (Philadelphia) 1881i, p. 19.
Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, p. 2249. See also James Harvey Young, ‘Pioneer Nostrum Promoter: Thomas W. Dyott’, Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, n.s. 1 (1961) p. 290.
Young, Toadstool Millionaires, p. 112; quoted from Dr Euen, An Essay in the Form of a Lecture, on Political and Medical Quackery (Philadelphia: c.1845).
John F. Marion, The Fine Old House. The History of Smith Kline Corp. (Philadelphia: SmithKline, 1980).
Young, Toadstool Millionaires; William Becker, ‘Wholesalers of Hardware and Drugs, 1870–1900’, PhD dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1969.
Ibid.; see also Glenn Porter and Harold Livesay, Merchants and Manufacturers: Studies in the Changing Structure of Nineteenth Century Marketing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974) p. 29.
George Winston Smith (ed.) ‘The Squibb Laboratory in 1863’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 13 (1958) pp. 382–94; Lawrence G. Blochman, Doctor Squibb, The Life and Times of a Rugged Individualist (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958) pp. 133–37.
George Winston Smith, Medicines for the Union Army (Madison: American Institute for the History of Pharmacy, 1962) p. 81; from A Statement of the Causes Which Led to the Dismissal of Surgeon General William Alexander Hammond from the Army (New York: n.p., 1864) p. 63. Other major orders went to the Louisville firm Wilson and Peter ($592 809.37) and the New York companies Philip Schieffelin and Company ($306 694.67) and to Squibb ($286 199.40).
George D. Rosengarten had an income of $98 526 in 1864, and William D. Weightman earned $83 255; E. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen, The Making of a National Upper Class (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958).
United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, part 1 (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1975) p. 210.
United States Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of Manufacturers, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: US Bureau of the Census, 1870) pp. 394–402.
Glenn Sonnedecker, ‘The Pharmacopoeia and America — 150 Years of Service’, Pharmacy in History, 12 (1970) pp. 156–9.
See also Erika Hickel, Arzneimittel-Standisierung im 19. Jahrhundert in den Pharma-copoen Deutschlands, Frankreiches, Grossbrittanniens, und der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1973).
United States Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census of Manufacturers, 1880 (Washington, DC: US Bureau of the Census, 1882).
Paul C. Olsen, The Merchandising of Drug Products (New York: Appleton, 1931).
Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand. The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977) pp. 214–15.
C. R. Rorem and R. P. Fischelis, The Costs of Medicine (Chicago: Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, 1932).
Horatio C. Wood, ‘Reminiscences of an American Pioneer in Experimental Medicine’, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Transactions, 3rd series, 42 (1920) pp. 195–234.
See also G. E. de Schweinitz, ‘Dr H. C. Wood as a Medical Teacher,’ College of Physicians of Philadelphia Transactions 3rd series, 42 (1920) pp. 235–241.
J. McKeen Cattell and J. Cattell, American Men of Science, 5th ed. (New York: The Science Press, 1935) p. 1231.
Horatio C. Wood, A Treatise on Therapeutics, Comprising Materia Medica and Toxicology, with Special Reference to the Application of the Physiological Action of Drugs to Clinical Medicine (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1874). Subsequent editions were printed in 1875, 1879, 1882, 1883, 1885, 1888. The title was then changed to Therapeutics: Its Principles and Practice: A Word on Medical Agencies, Drugs and Poisons, with Especial Reference to the Relations between Physiology and Clinical Medicine, which was issued in five editions from 1891–1905.
Williams Haynes, American Chemical Industry, vol. VI (New York: Van Nostrand, 1954) pp. 271–5; Mahoney, Merchants of Life, pp. 191–203. See acquisitions chart in Merck and Company archives, West Point, Pennsylvania.
J. A. Roth, ‘Wood’, in Health Purifiers and Their Enemies (New York: Neil Watson, 1977).
James Harvey Young, The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967) p. 83.
H. C. Wood, Joseph R. Remington, and Samuel P. Sadler, The Dispensatory of the United States of America. Rearranged, Thoroughly Revised and Rewritten, 15th ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1883).
George B. Swayze, Medical Times (Philadelphia). Quoted in Leo J. O’Hara, ‘Emerging Profession, Philadelphia Medicine, 1860–1900’, PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1976.
United States Census, Census of 1900, Vol.10, Manufacturers, No. 4, Selected Industries (Washington, DC: Census Office, 1902) pp. 612–15.
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© 1987 Jonathan Liebenau
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Liebenau, J. (1987). The Development of the Pharmaceutical Industry, 1818–90. In: Medical Science and Medical Industry. Studies in Business History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08739-6_2
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