Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry

345 Pages·2014·1.134 MB·English

by  Joseph M. Gabriel

Medical Monopoly
A series in the history of chemistry, broadly construed,
edited by Angela N. H. Creager, Ann Johnson, John E. Lesch,
Lawrence M. Principe, Alan Rocke, E. C. Spary, and Audra J. Wolfe,
in partnership with the Chemical Heritage Foundation
Medical Monopoly
Intellectual Property Rights
and the Origins of the Modern
Pharmaceutical Industry
Joseph M. Gabriel
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
Joseph M. Gabriel is associate professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social
Medicine at Florida State University.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2014 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2014.
Printed in the United States of America
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978-0-226-10818-6 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978-0-226-10821-6 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/ chicago/ 9780226108216.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gabriel, Joseph M. (Joseph Michael)
Medical monopoly : intellectual property rights and the origins of the modern pharmaceutical
industry / Joseph M. Gabriel.
pages cm. — (Synthesis)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-226-10818-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-10821-6 (e-book)
1. Pharmaceutical policy—United States—History. 2. Drug development—United States—History.
3. Pharmaceutical industry—Law and legislation—United States. 4. Drugs—Patents—United
States. 5. Intellectual property—United States. I. Title.
RA401.A3G33 2014
338.4976151—dc23
2014002923
o This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/ NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
For Jacob

Contents
A Note about Terms ix
Introduction 1
1 Medical Science and Property Rights in the Early Republic 7
2 Monopoly and Ethics in the Antebellum Years 42
3 In the Shadow of War 76
4 Therapeutic Reform and the Reinterpretation of
Monopoly 113
5 The Ambiguities of Abundance 153
6 The Embrace of Intellectual Property 195
Conclusion: The Promise of Reform 238
Acknowledgments 251 Archival Collections Consulted 255
Notes 259 Index 325

A Note about Terms
In this book I have generally italicized scientific names to
distinguish them from commercial names. In some cases,
however, there is some ambiguity because the two categories
did not always operate in the same way that they do today. I
have also capitalized commercial names but left nonpropri-
etary names lowercase. There is ambiguity in some of these
cases, since the boundary between commercial and nonpro-
prietary names was both fluid and frequently contested. In
both cases I hope the context makes the situation clear, but
in some cases my choices in these matters are necessarily
arbitrary.
There are also a number of terms that are easy to mis-
understand, and while I have tried to explain them in the
body of the text, it is worth calling attention to them here
to avoid confusion. Before 1890, the term “officinal” was
widely used to refer to products that were included in the
Pharmacopeia of the United States. (After 1890 the term was
replaced with “official.”) “Patent medicines” refers to a class
of pharmaceutical products that were typically made with
secret ingredients but were in fact rarely patented. In the
first chapter, the term “botanic” is used to refer to an alter-
native medical system developed by Samuel Thomson and
the broader health movement that grew out of his work, not
to the use of plants in medicine more generally. “Botanical,”
on the other hand, is used both as a noun to refer to raw
plants that were sold on the drug market and as an adjective
in discussion of plants and the science of botany.
Finally, the term “ethical” when applied to manufac-
turers is used in a nominal sense to refer to a segment of
ix