260 Book Reviews

Book Reviews

relation to the development of neurology as a arguments of Kant or Goethe, or indeed medical specialty and to knowledge of the Alexander Bain, were not? brain. (This in part perhaps reflects the lack of This “life” will give great pleasure and archival material on Head’s scientific work.) interest to many readers, perhaps most of all In particular, Head’s career as a theorist draws to those who, like Head himself, find both on the work of John Hughlings Jackson, work the sciences and the arts personally which, so Head claimed, had been almost indispensable. totally ignored. Had it? What reception did Head’s theory of sensation have? The Roger Smith, biography does not enable us to judge Head’s Moscow originality. (For Jackson, one should turn, perhaps the message is, to Jacyna’s earlier fine study, Lost words: narratives of language and Roy Church and E M Tansey, Burroughs the brain, 2000.) Head’s functionalist way of Wellcome & Co.: knowledge, trust, profit thinking encouraged him to mix physiological and the transformation of the British and psychological languages and therapies. pharmaceutical industry, 1880–1940, How special was this? Secondly, the book Lancaster, Crucible Books, 2007, pp. xxvii, does look “outwards” from the archive, as 564, illus. £19.99, $39.99 (paperback 97801- opposed to using the archive to illuminate the 905472-07-9). man, in two regards. The first of these, naturally, is to use the individual career to This work, based on detailed research of the illustrate contemporary medical practice. In firm’s archives, aims to tell the history of addition, however, Jacyna proposes a large Burroughs Wellcome, founded by Silas thesis, which gives the book its title, that Burroughs and Henry Wellcome in 1880, Head’s manner of life and work makes him an which eventually became the largest British exemplary “modernist”. That he was pharmaceutical manufacturer. The authors “modern” is well shown: he vehemently focus on how Burroughs Wellcome applied supported a scientific basis for medical new methods to the marketing side of the education, he was a rationalist in ethics and an business, paying attention to product unbeliever in religion, and he responded with development, branding, advertising, warmth to the innovations of modern salesmanship and market research, and how literature—to Flaubert, Ibsen, and, influenced the company invested in and promoted by Ruth Mayhew, to Henry James and, later, innovative medical research. It discusses the Virginia Woolf. He also had a deep tension between the commercial and scientific appreciation of Shakespeare, Goethe, Wagner side, the establishment of major laboratories, and so on. He certainly thought that it is the and the legal and regulatory challenges, such privilege of the individual and special mind to as obtaining permission to perform animal judge and to appreciate the arts. He was prone experiments. to believe that he had great personal insight The first part of the book, covering the into individual psychology and he thought years 1878–1914, starts by discussing the about people in psychological terms. He had firm’s founding and early days, the an anti-modernist’s revulsion to urban life. introduction of American business methods, Thus, I would have welcomed a more management and organization, tensions in the systematic discussion of the senses in which partnership, the difficult relation with the retail he could be described as “modernist”. If, as trade, the creation of the major research Head’s theories supposed, “the mind was an laboratories from 1894 onwards, the artificer that actively created the world with production of vaccines and sera (important which it interacted” (p. 150), in what sense before antibiotics became available), and the was this “modernist” in a way which the transformation of Burroughs Wellcome into a

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multinational company. The second part, certain products (thus maximizing the covering 1914–1940, studies the war’s impact, marginal social benefits of its investments) showing how the firm presented itself as a and to effects and side-effects that could help major supporter of the war effort through in developing new medicines or improving providing or developing medicines (such as quality. This suggests that marketing may not Salvarsan substitute against syphilis or a always have been so bad as some want us to serum against gas gangrene), the post-war believe nowadays. These methods were not organization of R&D, vaccine and sera only new in Britain for the pharmaceutical production for humans and animals, industry, but probably for many other competition in over-the-counter medicines, the industries as well. American side of the business, and the relative A central concept that runs through the decline in the interwar period. The book ends book is trust. Within the firm, management with an assessment of Wellcome’s influence and scientists needed to trust each other, and on pharmaceutical and medical research in the firm also needed to win the trust of Britain. doctors, pharmacists, government This is a meticulous work. It is at the cross- departments, professional associations, roads of business history and medical history. patients, and the general public. Many actions It is based on detailed research of the firm’s helped to gain this trust. The book notes, for (now part of GlaxoSmithKline) pre-1940 example, that the tropical disease laboratory in records, and on the personal papers of Silas Khartoum gave Burroughs Wellcome a good Burroughs and Henry Wellcome at the reputation in this area and in the colonies and Wellcome Trust and Library. Many other may have helped to win large government archival materials have been consulted, such contracts. as records from the Royal Pharmaceutical This is an essential addition to the existing Society, the National Archives and the histories of GlaxoSmithKline and its Medical Research Council. Lavishly predecessors, such as those of Glaxo and Allen illustrated with photographs, advertisements & Hanbury’s. A minor quibble is that the book and reproduced sources, it is a joy to own and is rather long and detailed, at times tending to read. Especially useful are the many tables the encyclopaedic—but, on the other hand, it with sales, profits and other business is so well-written and structured, and the information, performance of overseas lavish illustrations so clearly support specific subsidiaries and comparative data of British points made in the text, that it will be hard to competitors such as Allen & Hanbury and put aside for anyone interested in the May & Baker, which put Burroughs pharmaceutical industry, even if there are Wellcome’s achievements in perspective. The some detours here and there. tables sometimes serve to back up the This is an outstanding contribution to qualitative sources—they lend support, for British economic and business history, to example, to the company’s claim that in the the history of the British pharmaceutical early years of sera and vaccines production, it industry and to British medical history. In did not make money on it. addition it provides fresh glimpses of the There is a special insight into how life of Sir Henry Wellcome. That the book Burroughs Wellcome imported American sales is at the cross-roads of several fields makes practices, establishing a highly disciplined it all the more interesting. This is a sales force that had very clear instructions on monumental achievement that deserves to be how to sell (they asked doctors for only three widely read. minutes of their time and promoted only one product per sales call). The sales organization also functioned as an information system to Gerben Bakker, alert Burroughs Wellcome to the demand for London School of Economics

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