Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

pharmaceutical industry.
1829 Henri Leroux isolated Salicin from White Willow (Leroux, 1830).
1831 Discovery of chloroform.
1832 Henri Gerland synthesised salicylic acid.
1835 A Swiss chemist, Karl Jacob Löwig, isolated salicylic acid from
Spiraea ulmaria (meadowsweet).
The Nuremberg salt test double blind trial compared distilled snow
water with ordinary salt in a homeopathic C30-dilution of distilled
snow water. There were responses from 50 out of the 54
participants. In front of the volunteers, 100 vials were numbered,
shuffled, and split into two lots of 50. They were filled with either
distilled water or the homoeopathic remedy. The coding list was
sealed and the vials distributed to 54 volunteers by a commission of
people unaware of their contents. Only eight persons reported
experiencing anything unusual – 5 from the dilution group and 3 from
the water group. The conclusion was that the homeopaths claims
were ‘due to fruit of imagination, self-deception and preconceived
opinion–if not fraud’. (Stolberg, 2006). Unfortunately this false
philosophy has been supported by British royalty and is still payed for
by the NHS.
1838 Raffaele Piria, working in Pisa and Turin, Italy, isolated salicylic acid
from willow bark (Piria, 1838).
1839 Francois Magendie (1783–1855) presented to the Académie des
Sciences and to the Société Philomatique the results of his first
experimental work, which he carried out in collaboration with the
botanist and physician Alire Raffeneau-Delille (1778–1850). In a
series of ingenious experiments on various animals, the two
investigators studied the toxic action of several drugs of vegetable
origin, particularly of upas, nux vomica, and St. Ignatius’s bean.
These experiments mark the beginning of modern pharmacology.
For the first time an experimental comparison was made of the
similar effects produced by drugs of different botanical origin.
Magendie held that the toxic or medicinal action of natural drugs
depends on the chemical substances they contain, and it should be
possible to obtain these substances in the pure state. He discovered
anaphylaxis by giving repeated doses of egg albumen to rabbits
(Magendie, 1839).
The Manchu government attempts to prohibit further importation of
opium and precipitates the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856).