Search

This article retraces the history of an old medicine chest, used at the beginning of the 19th century, but probably designed earlier. Possibly made in A ustria, with a two-headed eagle lining the bottom of the lid, this first-aid kit belongs to a small group of related chests. It should be noted that these chests were used for a wide variety of different purposes over time. Also named a «droguier» in French, this light chest, made of walnut, and, according to family lore, found in Normandy, would have belonged to a doctor, as confirmed by a short invoice found among numerous documents. The identity of the supplier of numerous old medicines is shown on the labels on the flasks (many of which are intact) and other boxes (containing, in particular, herbal drugs) : «Clément, Apothicaire. Rue St Onge N°. 42. près le Bd. du Temple A Paris», whose history is recounted here step by step.

JBA Chevallier is first known for his publication in 1850 of his book on falsifications. But he had also a major role for the opening of the pharmacy world to toxicological and Public Health issues, through the founding in 1825, and the management for more than 50 years, of the Journal de chimie médicale, de pharmacie et de toxicologie (Journal of Medical Chemistry, of Pharmacy and of Toxicology). The purpose of the present study has been to look at the evolution of that publication over the years and to compare its content with the reference pharmaceutical journal at that time : the Journal de pharmacie et de chimie (Journal of Pharmacy and Chemistry). One can observe that the editorial lines of both journals will progressively diverge from each other, but Chevallier remained strongly connected with pharmacy, his journal merging finally in 1876 with the Répertoire de pharmacie (Index of Pharmacy).

For several convergent reasons, 1915 was a key period for the pharmaceutical industry in France. The overall realization that France was dependent on Germany for chemical and pharmaceutical products came from shortages of key drugs but also from massive use of poison gas for which France was not able to face this unexpected event. France's shortage for chemists properly trained to answer the needs of industry, the weak relationship between industry and faculty, the uncomfortable situation of specialty drugs, the regulations on patents and trademarks were many subjects of controversies which will contribute to the analysis of the source of this French dependence to Germany. It will be at the origin of new orientations after the war for the pharmaceutical industry and the French society. The objective was to be independent for drugs and consequently to resolve the identified issues, as well as to have a dynamic industrial research. The creation and development of several pharmaceutical companies after the war was a more or less direct benefit from the considerations starting in 1915.

Those sketches, restaured by the French "Institut national de l'audiovisuel", are transcribed and analyzed for the first time. They was probably broadcasted during the summer of 1939 by the private station Radio Gard Nîmes.

Since Antiquity, oyster is a subject of interest and medical use, as indicated by Oribiase and Galien. From the 17th century, this unique drug was proposed by physicians for various diseases, and more often for (la rage). One could think that that drug disappeared at the 20th and 21st centuries. But we can observe that it was still recommended by several authors as drug. Still today, companies offer oyster under various forms for allopathic and homeopathic treatments, as well as for food supplement. Research are ongoing to discover active substances within oyster and their potential medical interests.

In this article, the author examines the claims of the pharmacist Adolphe René Le Brun, assignee of the trademark "Coricide russe". Litigation and trials are reported. Some hypotheses are studied. But for now, no final award is considered.

About ten years ago, we reveal the identity of the creator of "Vin Désiles": Dr. Alexander Choffe. During this decade, we have updated new biographical informations on this character and we present them in the first part of this article. The second part is devoted to the history of the sale of "Vin Désiles" in Molière's native house at the Universal Exposition which took olace in Paris in 1900.

This article presents the raise of patent medicines composed of radium during the inter-war years. Because of a lack of regulation, this production was getting anarchistic. It is studied throught many documents from pharmaceutical laboratories wich are kept by the Curie' museum. Those laboratories would obtain certificates from Curie Institute, to show them in their advertisements.

This study relates, describes, analyzes & comments the content of a recently discovered old manuscript, written probably at the beginning of the 18th century, and compares it with the well known "Long life Elixir, or Swedish Elixir", manuscript found on a Swedish doctor who died at 104 years old as a result of a fall from his horse... The origin of this new manuscript can be established from 1700 to 1710, and seems to be probably anterior to the well known Swedish manuscript, meanwhile the text is almost similar,... and also is more complete than this one! We learn that the "Manna" is synonymic here of "fine Rhubarb". Another recipe, unknown on the other manuscript and titled "Dalibour Water" is also published: By similar way, this formula brings some new details, in particular in the exact composition, the preparation and the use of the "Long Life Elixir".

At the beginning of the 19th century in 1816, Jean Antoine Brutus Menier founded the "Maison Centrale de Droguerie Menier". It supplied most of the pharmacies in France with drugs of animal, plant and mineral origin for the pharmaceutical preparations recommended at that time. The company provided training for many chemists and pharmacists, and as such, had a collection of pots containing over seven hundred drugs that is currently held at the head office of the Council of the College of Pharmacists in Paris. After having described the pot collection, set it against the 19th century background which experienced a real revolution within this profession, and after retracing its history, a study was then carried out in order to compare the former uses with the modern uses for each of the drugs. Thanks to this detailed, comparative analysis it is now possible to evaluate the relevance of the therapeutic range of drugs in the first half of the 19th century, before the significant rise in chemistry. The Germinal Law changed the pharmacist's profession, and with the birth of chemistry, the art of the pharmacy was revolutionised. However, the drugs, and particularly those of plant origin, have managed to keep a dominant position in today's pharmaceutical domain and in the French or European Pharmacopoeia.

The treatise of the Virtue of medicines - Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) was a well known physician from Leiden, who was essentially known in France for the syndrome that received his name and for three of his books, which had been translated in French, and had much success during the 18th century, Elements of Chemistry, Aphorisms and Materia Medica. There was also a fourth book, The Treatise of the Virtue of Medicines, redacted by his students from notes taken during his lessons, which was translated in French in 1729. This volume, in in-8e format, of 471 pages, did not have the same success as his other books. It is anyway very interesting, because it shows that Boerhaave, even if he were Professor of Chemistry was not at all an iatrochemist but behaved as an iatromechanic.

During the inter-war years, the word "radiated" did not only suggest radioactivity, but it was also used to indicate exposure to others radiations, such as ultraviolets. The actinotherapy, a new therapy in vogue, was applied to many pathologies and tried on many substances. "Radiated drugs" result of those experimentations. Their therapeutical characteristics were found during searches on rickets. Our study relates the story of fight against rickets in France, from the use of cod liver oil to the synthesis of Vitamine D.

After difficult beginnings as a farm boy in Brittany, and then as a dish-washer at a chemist's in Paris, Pierre Famel (1855-1934) obtained his grammar certificate in 1879 and then his 2nd class chemist diploma from the Ecole de pharmacie de Paris in 1885. He was employed by the Laboratoire municipal de la Ville de Paris as an expert chemist. In 1886 he set himself up in a pharmacy at 86, rue de la Réunion, in Paris, known as the Pharmacie Famel. In 1912 he created the Laboratoires Famel for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products with sales representation in several European, North and South American as well as Canadian cities. He marketed among other things Famel Syrup, Famel suppositories, Langlebert glycophosphated wine, Sulfogène Famel and Optraex. The Famel firm obtained several awards at Exhibitions in France and elsewhere. On the death of Pierre Famel, the dispensary was sold, while his daughter and his granddaughter formed a partnership to manage the Laboratories. They still exist today as a finance company, the main activity of which is the management of its heritage. Pierre Famel was a foreign trade adviser, a vice-president of the Franco-Czechoslovakian and Franco-Iranian Chambers of Commerce. He created a prize for commercial attachés, as well as annual fellowships for students from foreign medical faculties. He was a sponsor of several youth clubs and charitable organizations, as well as a member of several Breton associations. He was the President of the Society of the Friends of the Pharmacology Faculty in Paris as well as the founder of the Museum devoted to Henri Moissan, the first French winner of the Nobel Price in Chemistry, who was for him a guide and a teacher in his early life and studies. He was a Commander of the Legion of Honour (1925) and was awarded the Gold Medal of foreign trade (1933). Also briefly mentioned are his wife, Marie Famel, an enamel painter, his daughter Yvonne Famel, and his son-in-law, Sylvain Rosengart, with whom he worked, as well as his granddaughter Yvonne Marie Rosengart-Famel, also a chemist.

The post-mortem inventories, true notarised documents, are choked full with details on the way of life of XVIIIth century apothecares. The most interesting of them describe exactly for us the content of apothecaries: drugs, remedies, pots, etc. starting from the examples of two representative regions of metropolitan France and its colonies, linked by a history of immigration that is Low-Normandy, which sent a number of its people to North America, and Canada. We will examine apothecaries' material possessions and the tolls of their daily trade. One primordial question emerges: the influence of Amerindian medicine on French and French-Canada XVIIIth century pharmacy.

A long while in The Egyptian Bazaar in Istanbul, which was one of the high place of oriental medicine and pharmacopoeia, were established the most famous apothecaries (aktar), herborists, manufacturers and merchants of perfumes, and so merchants of cotton. With that of Bursa, it was one of the greatest trade center for plants, drugs and exotic spices, uncommon and expensive. The products were landed along the southerly water-side of the Golden Horn. The travellers, who discovered with astonishment all the scents of Orient, the aromatic drugs, the mysterious perfumes, were charmed and most of them described particularly and in details this Drugs Bazar of Constantinople in their travelbooks. To day, the merchants of spices (baharatçi) who are in this place offer to their clients a large choice of aromatic products, homemade specialities and traditional medicines.

A medical consultation reserved to poor sick persons of countries around Nancy was organized by the Royal College of Medicine from 1752. Concerning the drugs, the College thout first to use an apothecary companion, then it agreed, in 1764, with the proposal of the apothecaries of the city to distribute them free of charge, each in turn for two months, one in winter and one in summer. In 1788, the apothecaries complained from the abuses committed in the writing of the consultation tickets. The gardener had to furnish plants, gratuitously or not, in order the consultants to prepare drugs at home. These practices lasted until the extreme end of year 1793 where the College was cancelled.

Henry the second, king of France, limited the entrance of drugs coming by sea to two French ports, Rouen and Marseilles. Apothecaries of Rouen were in charge of sifting these drugs. For that activity, a sifter helped them. Apothecaries did not limit their activities to receiving drugs from overseas but did also the shipment of medicines, prepared in Rouen, to be sailed in American islands i.e. Haiti or St Kitts. These medicines were convoyed to the other side of the Ocean by surgeons working on boats. Rouen proved to be a place for exchanges of drugs from both sides of the Ocean.

The journal Les Annales, under the direction of Adolphe Brisson, was deeply modified by Pierre (Adolphe's son) who decided to publish in 1927 the first issue of Les Annales with a green cover, so called Les Annales vertes. This journal contained a lot of pharmaceutical as well as parapharmaceutical advertising. It is the useful to make an analysis of it at a period which is just preceding the 1929 financial krasch and which is characterized by large advertising budgets in the pharmaceutical industry. Directed toward the general population, advertising was mainly targeting women and patients suffering from anaemia, intestinal transit diseases, or corn. It is also an opportunity to observe the dynamism of some pharmaceutical companies, most of which have disappeared since then. This very large amount of advertising, indeed in excess, will drive ultimately to change the law a few years later in order to control more and more tightly this activity of advertising that targeted the general population as well as medical doctors and pharmacists.

Since its coming out (1754) until the publication of the Annales de chimie (1789), the Journal de Médecine, Chirurgie, Pharmacie, &c. received papers and pieces of news from chemists; many of them cultivated their love for chemistry while they practised health professions.

The present period includes the end of 19th and in the beginning of 20th century in Bulgaria. The starting point is the liberation of the country from the 500 year yoke in 1878, when the creation of the state public administration started. Very intensive law initiative in all spheres is finded, including pharmaceutical. Structures on the different levels are created for supplying population with medicines. The state takes part both in regulation, wholesale trade and retail trade. In this initial period, even though limited, the beginning of social initiatives for reimbursement treatment is founded.

First only as a defensive city, Saragossa became during the 11th century an intellectual center since scholar rulers encouraged its development. Medical sciences belonged to the promoted disciplines. Four talented physicians exerted their skills in Saragossa: Al-Kattanî, Ibn Djanîh, Ibn Bâdjdja and Ibn Biklârish. Their drugs conceptions and understandings about drugs as well as Andalusian pharmacological specificities will be discussed here thanks to actual examples extract from their medical works.

A dossier in the archives of the Académie nationale de médecine made possible a description of the course of events in obtaining an approval of an anthelmintic syrup by the Société royale de médicine. The pharmacists Lanoix and Macors of Lyon founded a society in 1778 together with Greth, a non pharmacist, with the intention of exploiting in their sole names a syrup which he elaborated. In 1780 they request the Société royale de médicine a privilege for seling the syrup which was refused. After this unsuccessful attempt Greth however continued his efforts and obtained an approval in 1787. He sollicited even the kind protection of the minister in 1788. The documents demonstrate the impartiality and seriousness of the members of the Société royale and the not always orthodox procedures of the applicants.

Rāzī or Rhazès for Latin people is one of the great scientists of ninth century. He left major works in medicine, pharmacy and in alchemy. We examine here, the use of honey by this scientist as a simple drug and as one of the essential substances included in composed medicines. That leads us to examine the notion of simple and of composed in this physician and alchemist.

When one look at pharmaceutical advertising and trademarks at the beginning of the 20th century, several of them emphasize the interest of pharmaceutical specialties based on animal blood. This fashion goes back to Fuster's work in 1865 on tuberculosis, but also to Deschiens, Catillon, Adrian and mainly Richet. This interest for blood derivatives in therapy will progressively disappear after teh Second World war and with antibiotic discovery. Consequently, it has been a century of glory for these specialties that seem strange today in the context of HIV and ESB issues. But some of these research will be the basis for modern works on erythropoetin (the famous EPO).

Electuaries and theriacs include an important proportion of honey in their ingredients This one has a double purpose. It is an exicipient and a curative agent. On the other hand it is used as preservative, blinder and sweetener and on the other hand it is recommended because of its numerous healing virtues. Physicians take care of the selection and preparation's conditions to have an optimal quality of the honey and they consider its real nature got during its elaboration. Honey will be a perfect food and drug if it was not subjected to the digestion's action after its absorption.

Born in Brussels, Eekman lived in Paris during the twenties in relationship with Mondrian, Chagall and Ernst. His style kept the realistic and fantastic features of Bosch and Breughel. In 1960, Pr Griffon proposed to him the order of an original painting dedicated to the biological medicines and pharmaceutical research, destinated to the decoration of his son's pharmacy recently opened at Paris-Orly airport. This presentation analyzes the genesis of this work.

The physician and pharmacologist Ibn Djuldjul lived in the tenth century and wrote books relative to the drugs quoted or not quoted by Dioscorides and a treatise on theriac. In the latter, he presented, thanks to his experience, a theriac formula based on the data of Galen who had organized Andromacus's receipt. The orginality of Ibn Djuldjul consist in applying a mathematic method to explain why Galen has organized the entire simple and compound drugs in the preparation of theriac into seven groups and how he calculated the weight of the ingredients of Andros's tablets.

The chemist François Mandel, past author of Pharmcopée de Nancy, writes a list of medicines for civil hospices and a formulary for prisons. To take care of these adult, poor sick, drugs and medicines are chosen simple, at little expense, but adequate to treat everyday diseases. The prison formulary holds many novel preparations. The two manuscripts have never been published.

Averroes inherited a long tradition about theriac. He examined its nature, quality and utilization as an antidote of poisons or venoms and as a treatment of diseases. He stated that if the electuary, as antidote, was beneficial to the patient and to the physician, it might be dangerous as a regular and repeated medication of disease since it could transform the human nature and render it poison-like. Averroes's purpose was to analyze the advantages and drawback of theriac. He aimed at inducing physicians to more caution. He conducted a medico-philosophical and ethical reflexion on the validity of the medication and he advised against its prophylactic use.

The Formulary of Mons of 1755 was in use but for 14 years. As a matter of fact, it was adopted in flagrant violation of the centralising measures promulgated by the Empress Maria Theresa who had endeavoured to impose on the entire territory of the southern Low Countries the Vienese Dispensarium, a version of which was published in Brussels in 1747. The medicines intended for internal use appearing in the Formulary of Mons are divided into two categories, namely operationes chimicae and compositiones galenicae. The former comprise of formulae alluding, on the one hand, to substances proper to alchemy (such as mercury and antimony), and, on the other, to substances derived form the techniques in current use of alchemy, namely sales, flores, distilled waters, tinctura and spiriti. Among the latter, several categories of mediciens appear prominently: the category of electuaria, loochs and conservae, that of mellitae, syrops, robs and extracts and that of tablets, trochisci, pills and powders. All these are treated therein.

King Louis XV had a cat and some of his courtiers forced it to dance using eau de mille-fleurs (thousand flowers water). This name was given both to cow urine and to the distilled water obtained from cow dung. In this case, the medicine used was George Bate's eau de mille-fleurs, which contained alcohol.

Paris hospitals budget is, in the year 1848, the last before the "Assistance Publique" foundation. 1848 is characterized by important political troubles in Paris and an increased hospital activity. Nevertheless, the budget could suggest a certain wealth. Receipts are mainly based on financial funding and real estate incomes. Expenses are, for one half, linked to patients considered as hosts: food, heating, cleaning, etc. Staff expenses are moderate (12%). Various expenditures are in the same range within the different hospitals. It is interesting to outline the fact that drug expenses have the same importance than 150 years later: 4%. This feature is only an average insofar as general hospital spend about 10% of their budget in drugs as long-term care hospitals spend 1%. This disparity is clearly the proof of an increasing medicalization of Paris hospitals in the middle of the 19th century.

The traditional theriaque was made of a very large number of constituants. But in contrast, a small theriaque, called diatessaron, contained only four plants. It was described with the same therapeutical properties as the largest ones. Its composition remained nearly constant for many centuries. Its name was progressively modified into theriaque des pauvres because of its simplicity. But some of its constituants were issued from Arabic countries and were difficult to get in France; so this theriaque was not present in the pharmaceutical books which were used for low people in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries: indeed these books described only mixtures of french local plants.

The Baume du Commandeur de Pernes was studied in 1929 and the Commandeur identified by M. Bouvet; the origin of its synonym introduced by N. Lemery (1715), i.e. the Baume du Chevalier de St-Victor had not been elucidated up to now. The author's proposals, based upon genealogical data, are the following: two brothers Chevalier de St-Victor were enrolled in the Order of Malta in 1624 at St Gilles (Languedoc); one of them was able to transmit the Balm's formula to N. Lemery during his stay in Montpellier between 1668 and 1671. The geographically very different origins of the Commander and the Knight should prove perhaps that a basic pharmaceutical formulary common at least to all the French Commanderies was existing at that time. In the other hand, the fluctuations of the formula since the XVIIth century have been reported.

After the war, for the Austrian succession, the drugs which had been prepared for the french army, operating in Flanders, were sold to a grocer from Rouen, Pierre Gallot. He tried during twenty years to sail these drugs, which were getting older and older. The apothecaries' community members made their best to avoid the dispensation of these faulty drugs by an unqualified person. These periods 1750, 1756-1758 and 1770-1771 were especially rich in incidents. Many documents allow to follow the evolution of the conflict. Finally the grocer was condamned.

The medical chests on the vessel "The Amsterdam" of the Dutch East India Company, lost at sea on January 9, 1749, were controlled by a price list of 1739. They were made up by the apothecary of the arsenal of the Company in Amsterdam, and comprised 156 medications divided into 17 classes according to a mixed classification system, that is, galenical, botanical, chemical and even, occasionally, pharmacological. At the same period, for a number of crew members of clearly lesser status, the chests of the French East India Company contained 233 medical products divided into 13 galenical classes.