Hydrotherapy and medical entrepreneurship: the "water spell" of Ricardo Jorge.

Between 1886 and 1893, the doctor and hygienist Ricardo Jorge was linked to a commercial and medical project on the waters of Gerês. Known for many centuries and used for therapeutic purposes, they were administered on an empirical basis. When new chemical analyses were first published, the empirical properties of these waters took on a new role in hydrotherapy based on their now proven mineral and medicinal qualities. The article discusses in detail Ricardo Jorge's business venture, framing it in the context of the economic collection and treatment potential of mineral waters and the revival of the phenomenon of hydrotherapy, legitimized by new developments in the chemical analysis of waters. The commercial failure to exploit the water resources highlights the difficulties of this project and the complexity of the professional practice of hydrological medicine, although it resulted in a strengthening of Ricardo's authority and prestige in the field of hydrotherapy.

A tribute to Dr. Paul A. J. Janssen: entrepreneur extraordinaire, innovative scientist, and significant contributor to anesthesiology.

Dr. Paul Janssen was the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica and the developer of over 80 pharmaceutical compounds that proved useful in human, botanical, and veterinary medicine. He and his coworkers synthesized the fentanyl family of drugs, many other potent analgesics, droperidol, etomidate, and numerous other important medicines that were extremely useful in psychiatry, parasitology, gastroenterology, cardiology, virology, and immunology. Anesthesiology and medicine as a whole have benefited a great deal from his resourcefulness, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit.

'An adept in medicine': the Reverend Dr William Laing, nervous complaints and the commodification of spa water.

This essay addresses mineral water as a medical, experimental and economic material. It focuses on the career of the Reverend Dr William Laing (1742-1812), a physician and cleric who wrote two pamphlets about the water of provincial spa located in Peterhead, a town on the north-east coast of Scotland. I begin by outlining his education and I then reconstruct the medical theory that guided his efforts to identify tonics in the well's water. Next, I explain why Laing and several other local inhabitants thought themselves to be authorities on the palliative power of the water and I close by showing how such effects were commodified by local entrepreneurs. Although I concentrate primarily upon Peterhead Spa, this study touches upon several issues relevant to the types of medical theory and chemical experimentation that were being used in provincial Scotland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

A quantitative profile of the patent medicine industry in Baltimore from 1863 to 1930.

At least 661 unique patent medicine manufacturers promoted their nostrums in Baltimore from 1863 to 1930. The industry saw its greatest growth from 1880 to 1900 and peaked in 1907. Overall, about 7% of these companies were owned by women and 4% by African-Americans. Based on the short life span of most companies, the business environment appears to have been very competitive. The patent medicine industry began a steady decline after 1907 and by 1930 had lost nearly 40% of the companies. The temporal correlation of this decline with the passage of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 argues strongly that this legislation was an important contributor to the decline of the industry.

["Treating mankind honestly": medical innovation between market, public and science around 1800]. / "Treu und redlich an der Menschheit handeln": Medizinische Innovation zwischen Markt, Offentlichkeit und Wissenschaft um 1800.

This contribution is based on a case study of Professor Gottfried Christian Reich (1769-1848) of Erlangen, who in 1799 published what he considered to be an infallible method of curing any illness associated with a fever. This paper shows how in the course of a published debate the focus shifted from a medico-scientific issue to a moral one. Furthermore, the experiments carried out at Berlin's Charité hospital by order of the Prussian Medical Authority illustrate how the public debate had an effect on the assessment of the empirical evidence produced. Overall, this case study demonstrates that we can use the history of a medical innovation as a means to highlight the interconnections between medical science, the public, and the market.

The sources of innovation in the woollen and worsted industry of eighteenth-century Yorkshire.

This article examines the economic developments that induced producers to seek our innovations during a transformative period in the Yorkshire woollen industry. The analysis examines both the increase in the scale of the typical operation and the tremendous effect that fashion had on the industry. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the workings of real markets and product innovation focused entrepreneurial energy on the production process, and what that tells us about the origins of the Industrial Revolution.

[Nicolas Larbaud (1822-1889), chemist in Vichy]. / Nicolas Larbaud (1822-1889) pharmacien a Vichy.

Nicolas Larbaud was a chemist, who was qualified by the Faculty of Pharmacy of Paris. He was interested, since his installation in Vichy, in therapeutic mineral waters and in exploiting those waters by bottling them or by thermal baths. Larbaud had many proceedings with his own family, with the Vichy official company with his colleagues and with the administration. He had to defend by force Prunelle spring which was drilled in his own pharmacy. He discovered Saint-Yorre thermal spring and exploited it. He earned a great fortune, was elected mayor and district counselor. His son was Valery Larbaud, writer and translator.

George Fulford and Victorian patent medicine men: Quack mercenaries or Smilesian entrepreneurs?

In the early twentieth century, a time when patent medicine men were stereotyped as evil and dishonest, G. T. Fulford of Brockville, Ontario made his fortune from an iron pill called Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People. Once successful, Fulford remained in Brockville where he served on the town council and gave generously to charities. In 1900 he was appointed by Laurier to the Senate. When he died in 1905 he was remembered as a kind and ethical man. His story, like that of several other prominent patent medicine men, conforms more with the ideals of Samuel Smiles than with the popular image of disrepute.

Reluctant entrepreneurs: patents and state patronage in new technosciences, circa 1870-1930.

At a time when neoliberalism and financial austerity are together encouraging academic scientists to seek market alternatives to state funding, this essay investigates why, a century ago, their predecessors explicitly rejected private enterprise and the private ownership of ideas and inventions available to them through the patent system. The early twentieth century witnessed the success of a long campaign by British scientists to persuade the state to assume responsibility for the funding of basic research ("pure science"): their findings would enter the intellectual commons; their rewards would be primarily reputational (financial only secondarily, through consequent career advancement). The essay summarizes recent research in three separate fields of British techno-science--electricity, aviation, and agricultural botany--all of which were laying claim, at this time, to a heightened commercial or military importance that raised new questions about the ownership of scientific ideas. It suggests that each of the three established an idiosyncratic relationship with the patent system or with other forms of "intellectual property," which would both influence their emergent disciplines and affect the extent to which commercial enterprise could remain a viable funding strategy.