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Relating to Doctor F’s Holistic Doctor forum post.. Please do comment and add info as you see relevant and useful..
Britain in the final decades of the nineteenth century was a vibrant market place for purveyors of medicines, including, inter alia, drug peddlars and travelling quacks, dispensing doctors and chemists, and established compounding companies such as Allen & Hanburys (est. 1715).
In Europe however, especially in Germany and Switzerland and to a lesser extent in France, several research-based scientific manufacturing companies were emerging. The rise of the dye industry in Germany, itself a byproduct of a coal-tar industry, provided a cadre of well qualified chemists whose scientific investigations of dye products led to the recognition of medicinal effects, and consequently to the creation of several pharmaceutical companies including Hoechst, Bayer, Sandoz and Ciba. In Britain, the only company to engage seriously in such research activities was Burroughs, Wellcome & Co, founded in London in 1880 by two young American pharmacists.
In 1895 Burroughs died unexpectedly after a short illness, and Wellcome became the proprietor of the company. Although disputes with Burroughs’ widow caused some immediate difficulties, Wellcome’s new economic security soon enabled him to indulge his wide interests more extensively and roubstly than previously. Inspired by his personal passion for the history of medicine—a subject he interpreted broadly—he collected books, manuscripts and artifacts, supervised archaeological excavations, and created medical museums and a large personal library.
The discovery in Germany, in 1890, that animals immunized against diphtheria or tetanus produced antitoxins offered the hope of mass immunization and treatment against a range of infections. The therapeutic possibilities were rapidly recognised across Europe and the USA, and in Britain, Burroughs Wellcome & Co were among the first to announce successful production of serum antitoxin in November 1894.

Wellcome wanted to introduce routine biological testing and standardization of a wide array of pharmaceutical products. This approach, unique in Britain, involved use of animals in procedures regulated by the Home Office under the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act. Wellcome had applied for the WPRL to be registered for such experiments in 1896, when the antitoxin work began, but had been summarily rejected as a mere ‘tradesman’. In 1900 he applied again, precipitating a debate that lasted eighteen months. Government officials, once more concerned that a commercial manufacturer sought the privileges of professional men, consulted widely within medical and pharmaceutical circles as to the desirability and advisability of granting the request. Professional associations, including the medical Royal Colleges and the Pharmaceutical Society, voiced their disapproval, although powerful individuals (amongst them Lord Lister, Victor Horsley and Michael Foster) supported Wellcome. Eventually the application was approved, the Home Office being swayed by the economic argument that, if the BW&Co laboratories were not registered, either they or other companies would undertake such work abroad, and vital revenue and prestige would be lost to Britain. The officials concerned did not tell the medical organizations directly of their decision.
The registration in September 1901 of the WPRL for animal experimentation allowed the company to employ staff to undertake original scientific research, and one of the earliest recruits was Henry (later Sir Henry) Dale, who joined in 1904. Dale had trained at the Physiological Laboratory Cambridge and St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School in London and was recommended to Wellcome by Ernest Starling, professor of physiology at University College London, with whom he had been working

(sidenote – It was the neurologist, Charles Édouard Brown-Séquard (1817–1894), who truly founded the vital function of the adrenal glands. On 25 August 1856 he reported to the Académie des Sciences in Paris that removal of both adrenal glands in cats, dogs, rabbits guinea pigs and mice was fatal, usually within 12 hours; but blood from a healthy animal injected into the veins of an animal
deprived of its suprarenal bodies prolonged its survival.