Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

predisposition that one cannot call into question.’ He mentions some
predisposing factors: youth, femininity, weak, lymphatic (pale flabby
or sluggish) and scrofulous (tuberculous) patients (see Pliny 77 AD).
He describes the rashes covering the sites of predilection, detailed
accounts of the objective and subjective symptoms with case
histories, but without any histopathology.
The Japanese clarified their principles of dispensing with the ‘Medical
Service Order’ of 1874.
1875 UK Sale of Food and Drugs Act, but despite this many counties
failed to test drug samples and less than one third of cases where
adulteration was proved were prosecuted (Abraham, 1995).
The Canadian passed the Inland Revenue Act, which despite its
name, aimed at preventing the adulteration of food, drinks and drugs.
This act was tightened up in 1884 with the Adulteration Act and fixed
official standards for drug composition. Secret remedies were tackled
by the 1909 Proprietary or Patent Medicines Act. Biologics were
included in the 1927 Food and Drugs Act. The 1953 Food and Drugs
Act controlled the conditions of manufacture and remains current.
(snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html)
Accessed 21 st July 2009.
1876 At the post-mortem of a TB patient who had taken 12 grammes of
salicylic acid (forerunner of Aspirin) Goltdammer found several
gastric ulcers (Goltdammer, 1876). Salicylic acid caused buzzing in
the ears, (tinnitus), difficulty in hearing (Bertagini, 1855), urticaria
(Leube, 1879), oedema of both eyelids (Heinlein, 1878) and
petechiae (Freudenberg, 1878) and albuminuria… inflammation of
the parenchyma of the kidneys (Balz, 1877). ‘Forewarned is
forearmed’ all these occurred later with Aspirin (Lewin, 1881).
Stricker (Stricker, 1876) and MacLagan (MacLagan, 1876) found
that salicylic acid was useful in the treatment of rheumatic fever. At
this time the Hottentots of South Africa were using a decoction of
willow-tops for rheumatic and other fevers (Volmink, 2005). During
the period 1876–1880 there was much discussion as to the relative
worths of salicin and sodium salicylate in the treatment of acute
rheumatism.
1877 The British Medical Association set up in Manchester a committee to
investigate the sudden deaths with chloroform. This was the first time
that a committee had been set up to solve an adverse event
problem.