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In the late nineteenth century, as in other regions of Argentina and Latin America, the Santa Fe press featured a growing number of offers of health products such as tonics, pills and syrups. Aimed at a lay audience, these claimed to cure a series of conditions defined as belonging to "modern life." This article analyzes the discursive dimension of the advertisements printed between 1890 and 1918: how they organized meanings associated with these conditions, an issue that is inscribed within a broad line of research aimed at analyzing social representations of health and disease, and how they participated in the different social spheres in the constitution of modern-day Argentina.

The Faculty of Pharmacy of Santiago de Compostela was founded in 1857, but research activities did not start until the beginning of the 20th century. The new Spanish regulations promoting the experimentation at universities and the stages of professors and recently graduated students outside Spain contributed to generate a remarkable research group in a provincial university. The excessive university centralism at that time in Spain and the characteristics of the headquarters of the faculty -- a 16th century Renaissance palace -- hindered, in general, the research development. However, the scientific spirit of professors and students, and their work were imposed and they achieved an estimable status in pharmacy research in Galicia. The facilities were the staff's highest priority and it raised more than a protest. A remarkable investment in apparatuses and laboratory materials was carried out and researchers started to publish original research papers in local journals, such as the "Revista de farmacia," published by their own University. In the previous years to the Spanish Civil War (1936) the research status in drug development and the background of the staff and students were important, allowing them to join the military laboratory that Franco's army created at the faculty of pharmacy. The research work continued in a small scale and was specially focused on the production of "copy drugs" coping European specific drugs which were scarce at that time. The first third of the 20th century was the germ of the great research prestige that the Faculty of Pharmacy of Santiago de Compostela enjoys at present.

A historical review of antimalarials used in Venezuela is presented from the time when the bark of quina was used until the massive distribution of quinine and metoquine by the Dirección de Malariología y Saneamiento Ambiental. The utility of chloroquine and primaquine against sensible parasite isolates and of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and quinine, currently used against P. falciparum resistant strains, is thoroughly discussed. The author suggests use of artemisimine and its derivatives as a very promising antimalarial drug. She also stresses the possibility of the application of new antimalaria vaccine against P. falciparum blood states, presently assayed in the country as an additional tool in malaria control programs.

The tasks and duties of apothecaries were perfectly outlined and regulated by the Real Tribunal de Protomedicato (Royal Tribunal of the Protomedicate) as well as the Real Colegio de Boticarios (Royal College or Apothecaries). However, when the Real Colegio de Medicina de Madrid (Madrid Royal College of Medicine) was set up, this institution began to take over certain responsabilities which, until then, had been regulated and controlled by a series of instutions such as the Royal Colleges. This was clear interferences in the privated affairs of these institutions in the presumible aim of newly centralizing power in one medical centre as had occurred throughout history. In any case, professional Colleges began to spring up and clearly define the frontiers between the three branches of health care. They also began to dictate deontological standards both in the professional terrain and between professionals and society in general.