| Abstrakt: |
Today the United States leads the world in pharmaceutical and chemical research and manufacturing. This preeminence has been gained only since World War I, through the imagination, initiative, and enterprise of many men. This is but an early chapter in the story of the fight for American independence of European countries in this field.Of 592 drugs listed in the 1916 edition of New and Nonofficial Remedies,1 228 were imported into the United States from Germany. Among these were such products as Aspirin, Anesthesin (benzocaine), Salvarsan (arsphenamine), Neosalvarsan (neoarsphenamine), and Novocaine (procaine). The supply from Germany, the only source of many of these, was abruptly cut off by World War I. In 1919, Leech, Rabak, and Clark2 stated: "Before European hostilities the United States was so dependent on Germany for synthetic drugs that the dependence was considered a necessity." Most Americans at that time |
