One hundred years : Wellcome: in pursuit of excellence / Gilbert Macdonald.

  • Macdonald, Gilbert.
Date:
1980
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: One hundred years : Wellcome: in pursuit of excellence / Gilbert Macdonald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Henry Wellcome, aged 16 Dr Jacob Wellcome, frontier soldier and surgeon apothecary Right: Brockedon's original apparatus for the manufacture of compressed drugs, 1843 set up on their own in the United Kingdom was 'compressed medicines', the new method of presenting drugs which had been developed in the United States. In Britain it was the day of the potion, the pestle and the pill. The contrast with the new compressed drugs coming from America, which Burroughs and Wellcome were experienced in selling, could hardly have been greater. Although the compressed pill was first made in England as early as 1843 by Brockedon (whose business and rights were later acquired by Burroughs Wellcome), the great technical advance had been made in America in the 1870s. There is evidence to suggest that Burroughs Wellcome were first in Britain to use the term 'tablet' for this type of medicine, although in America John Wyeth had used it earlier. What is certain is that the word 'Tabloid' which Wellcome coined and registered in 1884 was to become one of the most renowned of all trade marks. Sir Henry Dale, in an obituary tribute to Wellcome in The Times of 1 August 1936, wrote that 'Henry Wellcome, for a man of such wide and generous activities and interests, was curiously lonely and it is doubtful that anyone knew him with sufficient intimacy to do more than speculate as to his real feelings and motives! There is, however, enough in the records and personal files to enable a composite portrait to be drawn, even if the image may sometimes be blurred. It is