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.

    9/124 (page 7)
    pharmaceutical manufacturers, with whom he had been a sales representative, and was sent in 1878 to London. It was only a matter of months, however, before he resigned to set up his own agency on behalf of Wyeth and several other American companies. John Wyeth, in celebrating their centenary in Britain in 1978, paid tribute to his contribution on their behalf. Meanwhile, back in the States, Wellcome was carefully planning his career. Even as a student, his scientific acumen was recognised. His thesis, Urethral Suppositories - Improvements in their Shape and Manufacture, was the first of a series of original papers. He was also in great demand as a lecturer. He had taken up his first preference as a pharmacist with an exclusive drug house in New York called Caswell, Hazard & Co. The salary was small, but it was experience that Wellcome was seeking. Two years later he was invited to join the well-known firm of McKesson & Robbins. His brief was to introduce and promote the new gelatine-coated pills to doctors and druggists. This gave him an opportunity to travel, and he made a number of journeys by mule in remote parts of Central and South America. He put any spare time he had to good use. For example, although the medicinal qualities of cinchona bark had been known for centuries, little was known of its most active constituent, quinine, and how it could be produced. As a result of his observations in Ecuador and Peru, Wellcome published a paper on the subject in the Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association and the Pharmaceutical Journal of Great Britain. Wellcome was soon faced with the need to make a major decision. He had received an offer from Burroughs to join him in England. There was, though, another name which attracted him to Europe - Frederick Belding Power, like Burroughs, a former fellow student in Philadelphia, who had been described earlier in a letter from Wellcome to his parents as 'the best student in the college, bound to excel all others. . a natural chemist! Power had joined up with a distinguished chemist in Germany in 1879 and Wellcome's scientific intuition detected possible areas of collaboration. However, McKesson & Robbins helped Wellcome to make up his mind. They offered him the sole agency for their products in Britain and all other countries outside the United States. Henry set sail for England. Yet he kept his options open. After a visit to Vienna, he met Power in Strasburg. Their friendship was consolidated and the door kept open for future collaboration. Power, in fact, joined Wellcome sixteen years later as his first Director of Chemical Research, one of the first examples of Wellcome's uncanny knackof selecting staff who were to achieve outstanding reputations. The principal factor in the decision of Burroughs and Wellcome to Right: Models of the improved suppositories and bougies, prepared by Wellcome in 1893, recalling his thesis By Jtynri) ^oloraonttleUcotot ol'OarCi.Ctt Cit\.^Uinit y/,nyf'/r*£<t<S* » $tistn.jtr.Jj«hi>»J«r,Jtlinn. <//„,/,,, Above: Title page of Inaugural Essay on Urethral Suppositories Right: Graduate in Pharmacy, 9th March 1874 L3IU|rmS - J]