Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Burroughs Wellcome & Co. was one of the most influential pharmaceutical companies of the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, and the largest manufacturer of pharmaceuticals in Britain before the Second World War. Roy Church and E. M. Tansey have produced a detailed and comprehensive account of the complicated history of the business through this period. The book's first part, consisting of eight chapters, outlines the early years of the company, from its establishment in London in 1878 by the hot-headed American pharmacist Silas Burroughs to the successful position it enjoyed by 1914. Topics addressed along the way include the often tumultuous relationship between Burroughs and his partner from 1880, Henry Wellcome; their management of the business; and company expansion, aided by new machines that allowed the standardization of medicines, the use of innovative advertising techniques such as 'detailing' medical men, the cultivation of overseas markets and the advance of scientific research in purpose-built laboratories - the first ones of their size in Britain. In the book's second part, also consisting of eight chapters, Church and Tansey consider the impact that the First World War had on production, the development of pharmaceuticals after 1918 and the ultimate decline of the company by 1940. In the final three chapters they reflect further on that decline and...