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Fashionable 'flu
DISSECTING ROOM
From bonnie babies to pharmaceuticals: a history of Glaxo The Business of Medicine: the Extraordinary History of Glaxo, a Baby Food Producer, which Became One of the World’s Most Successful Pharmaceutical Companies Edgar Jones. London: Profile Books, 2001. Pp 520. £25.00. ISBN 1861973403. rugs, legal and otherwise, are a major part of contemporary life—the fact shouts out not only from the medical and scientific press, but also from the business pages of the broadsheets and the headlines of the tabloids. Indeed, that use of the word “Tabloid”, a protected tradename of the Burroughs Wellcome Company for compressed medicines, is just one indicator of the widespread permeation of pharmaceuticals into modern society. How is it that at the beginning of the 21st century we expect such a lot from our medicines and other drugs—treatment, prevention, relief of symptoms, long-term maintenance, complete cure, and even improvement of normal function? Just a century ago there were no such prospects:
D
symptomatic relief was the most that many people hoped for, from either conventional medicines, such as the newly discovered aspirin, or from more traditional sources of relief, such as opium-based palliatives and alcohol. The development and availability of safe, reliable medicines have made major contributions to human wellbeing over the past century. The advances have been enormous: increasing biological and chemical knowledge of the structure and actions of drugs; synergistic understanding of regulatory functions in normal and pathological physiology and pharmacology; standardisation of medicines and appropriate legislation to prevent adulteration and contamination; and the development of national, and subsequently
international, pharmaceutical companies that produce and sell medicines. It is this latter aspect that Edgar Jones explores to a well defined, but limited, extent in his new book on just one such company. Glaxo started life in London in 1906 as a tradename for a brand of dried milk, a by-product of the butter business run by New Zealand merchants Nathan and Sons. Originally launched without much success as a general household product under the name of “Defiance”, the merchandise was rebranded as a safe infant food, at a time when there were widespread concerns about milk contamination and adulteration, including those voiced in The Lancet. The famous slogan on the tins was “Glaxo builds bonnie babies”.
Close up Fashionable ’flu Just before the end of World War I, the first signs of a worldwide “Spanish” influenza epidemic hit the UK. In October, 1918, more than 2000 people in London died of influenza in one week alone; by November, the US Federal Bureau of Health was reporting that more US servicemen had died in the epidemic than of wounds suffered in battle. 1929 saw the beginning of another influenza outbreak that was to last until 1937. However, the social climate of the times was very different from a decade earlier. Here, in an unattributed photograph from 1929, a smart young couple proudly display their surgical masks, or “stylish nose caps” as the society pages preferred to call them. Whether these fashion accessories actually warded off the dreaded virus is anybody’s guess, but at least one would have faced the threat in an appropriately trendy manner.
Rights were not granted to include this image in electronic media. Please refer to the printed journal.
Mary Evans Picture Library
Colin Jacobson e-mail: [email protected]
1444
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • April 20, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
From bonnie babies to pharmaceuticals: a history of Glaxo The Business of Medicine: the Extraordinary History of Glaxo, a Baby Food Producer, which Became One of the World’s Most Successful Pharmaceutical Companies Edgar Jones. London: Profile Books, 2001. Pp 520. £25.00. ISBN 1861973403. rugs, legal and otherwise, are a major part of contemporary life—the fact shouts out not only from the medical and scientific press, but also from the business pages of the broadsheets and the headlines of the tabloids. Indeed, that use of the word “Tabloid”, a protected tradename of the Burroughs Wellcome Company for compressed medicines, is just one indicator of the widespread permeation of pharmaceuticals into modern society. How is it that at the beginning of the 21st century we expect such a lot from our medicines and other drugs—treatment, prevention, relief of symptoms, long-term maintenance, complete cure, and even improvement of normal function? Just a century ago there were no such prospects:
D
symptomatic relief was the most that many people hoped for, from either conventional medicines, such as the newly discovered aspirin, or from more traditional sources of relief, such as opium-based palliatives and alcohol. The development and availability of safe, reliable medicines have made major contributions to human wellbeing over the past century. The advances have been enormous: increasing biological and chemical knowledge of the structure and actions of drugs; synergistic understanding of regulatory functions in normal and pathological physiology and pharmacology; standardisation of medicines and appropriate legislation to prevent adulteration and contamination; and the development of national, and subsequently
international, pharmaceutical companies that produce and sell medicines. It is this latter aspect that Edgar Jones explores to a well defined, but limited, extent in his new book on just one such company. Glaxo started life in London in 1906 as a tradename for a brand of dried milk, a by-product of the butter business run by New Zealand merchants Nathan and Sons. Originally launched without much success as a general household product under the name of “Defiance”, the merchandise was rebranded as a safe infant food, at a time when there were widespread concerns about milk contamination and adulteration, including those voiced in The Lancet. The famous slogan on the tins was “Glaxo builds bonnie babies”.
Close up Fashionable ’flu Just before the end of World War I, the first signs of a worldwide “Spanish” influenza epidemic hit the UK. In October, 1918, more than 2000 people in London died of influenza in one week alone; by November, the US Federal Bureau of Health was reporting that more US servicemen had died in the epidemic than of wounds suffered in battle. 1929 saw the beginning of another influenza outbreak that was to last until 1937. However, the social climate of the times was very different from a decade earlier. Here, in an unattributed photograph from 1929, a smart young couple proudly display their surgical masks, or “stylish nose caps” as the society pages preferred to call them. Whether these fashion accessories actually warded off the dreaded virus is anybody’s guess, but at least one would have faced the threat in an appropriately trendy manner.
Rights were not granted to include this image in electronic media. Please refer to the printed journal.
Mary Evans Picture Library
Colin Jacobson e-mail: [email protected]
1444
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • April 20, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.