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History Faculty Publications Department of History

1989 Review: 'Alexander von Humboldt und die Pharmazie' John Alfred Heitmann University of Dayton, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/hst_fac_pub Part of the History Commons eCommons Citation Heitmann, John Alfred, "Review: 'Alexander von Humboldt und die Pharmazie'" (1989). History Faculty Publications. 85. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/hst_fac_pub/85

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. contact was less intimate and extensive than that of HUMBOLDT AND PHARMACY the general consultant. The specialist-consultant pro- vided research expertise in his special area through actual laboratory work and by keeping the company Wolfgang-Hagen Hein, Alexander von Hum- abreast of new developments in his area. Swann uses boldt und die Pharmazie, Veröffentlichungen two University of Wisconsin pharmacologists, Arthur der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte Loevenhart and Arthur Tatum, as examples of this der Pharmacie e.V., Neue Folge, Band 56 (Wis- type of collaboration. Finally, there were collabora- senschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 7000 Stutt- tions that emerged to work on a single therapeutic gart 1, Postfach 40, FRG, 1988; 130 pp.; DM agent. These were short-term marriages of conven- 29). ience but often had long-term consequences for both partners. Swann uses as illustration of this typology During the late eighteenth and early nine- the work of Eli Lilly and Company with University teenth centuries, when generalists rather than spe- of Toronto scientists in the development of insulin cialists and individuals rather than organizations and the work of the same company in producing liver dominated the course of scientific development, Ger- extracts in collaboration with scientists at Harvard man naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and Rochester. Swann does an excellent job in show- stood out as a leading figure in such diverse yet in- ing the sticking points of these two Lilly collabora- terrelated fields as geography, geology, botany, med- tions, building for the insulin story on Michael Bliss's icine, and pharmacy. And despite the massive body model study. But the more important lesson is con- of historical writings on Humboldt, little is known tained in the benefits to both sides. These were fi- concerning his contributions to pharmacy and his re- nancial to be sure, but they also brought academic lationship to the discipline's practitioners. Wolfgang- recognition for the university scientists, including Hagen Hein ably fills this void in scholarship with Nobel Prizes, and near revolutionary changes in re- his well-researched Alexander von Humboldt und search and development at the Indianapolis phar- die Pharmazie. The significance of this topic to the maceutical company. history of science should not be underestimated, since John Swann has written a book of large sig- during Humboldt's lifetime pharmacy not only was nificance to several fields of history. Like all such transformed in terms of new knowledge concerning books it will serve as a spur to further research by both inorganic compounds and organic natural prod- historians. There is certainly room for other scholars ucts, but also because as a discipline it was an im- to add to our understanding of biomédical research portant source of manpower for the "new" chemistry in universities and pharmaceutical companies during initiated by Lavoisier and others. Beginning with the the first four decades of the century, though one sus- turn of the nineteenth century an emerging gener- pects that the general outlines of Swann's story will ation of chemists left the apothecary shop for the stand as additional cases are brought to light. Other opportunities of the rapidly developing German uni- historians will need to investigate more thoroughly versity. These former apothecaries- like Heinrich and than Swann has the business of pharmaceutical man- Gustav Rose-applied the knowledge and skills gained ufacturing and marketing. Even more important, during apprenticeship within a new institutional set- however, is the need to move forward in time. Swann's ting and thus provided much of the academic lead- book ends in 1940 (with a brief but interesting epi- ership necessary for the gradual evolution of chem- logue about the present), before the immensely im- ical science in Germany in the decades before Justus portant collaborations of World War II, collabora- von Liebig's spectacular rise to preeminence. tions in which a third player, government, entered Although the author is aware of the powerful the game. What happened during the 1940s and after influence that pharmacy played on chemistry during is something scholars and policymakers in many fields the period under consideration he perhaps wisely chose need to know. The research will be difficult. More to restrict his study to Humboldt and his contacts archives will need to be opened. More scholars of among pharmacists. As a model of scholarship, Wolf- Swann's talents will need to understand the impor- gang-Hagen Hein used George Urdang's study on tance of this subject. Academic Scientists and the Goethe and pharmacy, but a different kind of product Pharmaceutical Industry will show the way.- James resulted. Unlike Urdang's work, the author had few H. Madison, Department of History, Indiana primary manuscript materials available and thus was University. forced to reconstruct the past in a way in which the

40 Pharmacy in History

This content downloaded from 131.238.108.120 on Fri, 03 Jun 2016 13:13:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms often expected microscopic detail associated with this order to better understand the relative influence of genre of scholarship is missing. Nevertheless, this these individuals. Using this strategy a sense of the absence of diaries and letters can be interpreted as relative influence that these figures had on Humboldt being a disguised blessing, since by attacking the and his thinking during the last two decades of his periphery rather than the center of his topic Hein has life crystallizes, and unfortunately this is perhaps the skillfully produced a splendid collective biography of best one can do since Humboldt's books were de- these pharmacists contemporary to and associated stroyed in a fire prior to the auction. with Humboldt. In conclusion, Wolfgang-Hagen Hein's Alex- Organizationally the author divided his mon- ander von Humboldt und die Pharmazie is far more ograph into three main sections beginning with the than a work on Humboldt. Indeed, it is a study whose role of pharmacists during Humboldt's formative strength lies in the biographies of those pharmacists years. After discussing the important influence of in contact with the German naturalist, and thus it Carl Ludwig Willdenow and to a lesser extent that serves as a useful source of information dealing with of Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstaedt, J.F. Göttling, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Eu- J.W. Ritter and Nicolas Vanquelin, Hein examined ropean pharmaceutical community.- John A. Heit- the significance of Humboldt's 1799-1804 expedition mann, History Department, University of Dayton. to the Americas. Humboldt took to Venezuela, Co- lombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States a scientific methodology that was in part derived from DES DILEMMA his contacts with pharmacists like Willdenow, and his subsequent inquiries and observations resulted in the introduction of a host of new substances to West- Roberta Apfel and Susan Fisher, To Do No ern Europe. For example, Humboldt's systematic Harm: DES and the Dilemma of Modern Med- study of the distribution and varieties of Cinchona icine (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, Bark led to future investigations concerning its cul- 1984; χ + 199 pp.; price unavailable). tivation in India and elsewhere. Other natural prod- ucts sent to Humboldt's pharmaceutical network in Modern pharmacology came into being as a Europe for analysis and evaluation included Tolu- pivotal science of modern medicine. With its devel- balsam, curare, and guano, and these substances were opment in twentieth-century America came a mech- later used to treat a wide variety of ailments and anism for bringing the laboratory sciences to the bed- diseases. side and the pharmacists into the American system Upon Humboldt's return in 1804 the nature of of allopathic medicine. his contacts with the pharmacy community subtly The authors are medical doctors, psychoanal- changed since his fame and status were now firmly ytically oriented psychiatrists who have worked with established within court circles and scientific com- victims of DES and interviewed the doctors who took munities. Yet Humboldt remained tied to a dynamic part in the tragedy. They use the accounts by the network of pharmacists that served him by funding actors to give us the experience of DES, through the valuable sources of information. Emphasis was no lenses of their psychodynamic framework. Thus the longer placed upon scientific methodology and theory doctor's dilemma is one of a desire to heal and the but rather on the wide ranging factual data necessary painful realization that he violated his moral imper- for his written works, including observations and ative "to do no harm." chemical analyses introduced in his capstone Kosmos. Apfel and Fisher are even more interested in The mature Humboldt's most significant relation- the psychodrama for the patients who trusted these ships with pharmacists included ties with Franz Au- doctors. As clinicians, they draw on their own prac- gust von O'Etzel, Heinrich Rose, Heinrich Robert tice with DES mothers and daughters set up for trag- Göppert, Johann Christian Poggendorff, Samuel edy and disillusion by their (post World War II) de- Heinrich Schwabe, and Hermann Schacht. For Hein sires for children and "normal" family life. This the elucidation of these relationships proved to be setting draws us into the experience of mothers who most difficult due to the lack of primary source ma- felt violated by their personal doctors when their sci- terial, since Humboldt rarely saved letters. To over- ence failed, and into the experience of daughters who come this obstacle the author cleverly employed the felt cheated by their mothers who harmed them even Sotheby's auction catalogue of Humboldt's library in in utero.

Vol. 31 (1989) No. 1 41

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