What's in a name? Henry Dale and adrenaline, 1906

Abstract

By the beginning of the twentieth century the use of widespread advertising, trade names, and specialized marketing techniques was a distinctive feature of the commercial world. These attributes were well developed in the trade in medicines, a field that ranged from quack cures and secret remedies through proprietary brands to "ethical pharmacy".1 The British pharmaceutical firm, Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. had, by that time, achieved considerable success in promoting itself as an ethical company guided by scientific principles and remote from the quackery and chicanery of pill peddlers and nostrummongers. A component of that ethical behaviour was the maintenance of their own production and advertising standards and the proper recognition of others' commercial rights.