Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Kolbe and Lautemann made synthetic salicylic acid from phenol.
1861 Holmes OW. ‘Currents and countercurrents in medical science with
other addresses and essays’. Boston, Ticknor and Fields. ‘I firmly
believe that if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk
to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind,– and
all the worse for the fishes.’
1862 Des éruptions médicamenteuses pathogénétiques’ [Pathogenic druginduced
skin rashes] Paris, Thesis by Leon Guérard. 1862. 55 pages.
‘The diagnosis of drug eruptions is generally easy; one is alerted
by the sudden appearance of the illness, its sharp and rapid
progress, the site, the form and arrangement of the rash, etc.’ This
thesis covers: resins (balsams), belladonna, arsenic, mercury,
iodides, antimony, opium, morphine, iron, cod liver oil, silver nitrate
and quinine sulphate.
Erythema due to belladonna/henbane or strammonium apple:
minimal dose–a diffuse reddening, especially on the face and neck.
Lack of fever and dilated pupils confirm the diagnosis. Rapid onset
within the first few hours, and lasts for only a few hours’.
Hydrargyrie/mercurial eczema: apparently rare in France as
compared with England. Uses the scheme put forward by Alley (see
1804) and he gives a full description of the three phases.
Opium and morphine: ‘pseudo-exanthemata, either erythematous
or papular, secondary to the sweating and itching’.
This seems to be the first collection of ADRs referring to a group
of drugs rather than to a single drug.
1863 Johan Adolf von Baeyer, a twenty-nine-year-old assistant of Friedrich
August Kekule (the discoverer of the molecular structure of benzene)
in Ghent, synthesizes barbituric acid, the first barbiturate. It is said
that he named it after St Barbara since he discovered it on her saint’s
day – 4 th December 1863 (Cozanitis, 2004).
The forerunner of salvarsen, Atoxyl was discovered by Béchamp A.
1864 The Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society (now the Royal Society of
Medicine) published a ‘Report of the Scientific Committee on the
uses and the physiological, therapeutical and toxical effects of
chloroform, as well as into the best mode of administering it, and of
obviating any ill consequences resulting from its administration’. The
inquiry was sparked by 123 fatalities following its administration.
They found that chloroform depressed the action of the heart and