Gesnerus
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Biography Historical Article
[The effects of the success of the synthesis of Stovaïne in science and industry. Ernest Fourneau (1872-1949) and the transformation of the field of medicinal chemistry in France].
The synthetic local anaesthetic Stovaine was commercialised in France in 1904. Its inventor, Ernest Fourneau, began his career as a pharmaceutical chemist in organic chemistry laboratories in Germany, where from 1899 to 1901 he discovered how basic research could benefit from the modern chemistry theories which had developed in Germany starting in the 1860s. ⋯ Emile Roux, Director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was interested in his work and invited him to head the first French therapeutic chemistry laboratory, in which research on medicinal chemistry was organised scientifically. The industrial development of new medicines resulting from the Pasteur Institute's therapeutic chemistry laboratory was supported by the Etablissements Poulenc frères, France thus gaining international reputation in the domain of pharmaceutical chemistry.
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Biography Historical Article
[Research on self-initiation of cell death towards the end of the 19th century].
At the end of the 19th century, research on cell Death in France and Germany was not simply forgotten by contemporary research but in this context it appears that the growing power of cell theory together with an ancient philosophical "superiority" of life over death hijacked more surely the attention of the discoverers--among whom Vogt--of self-initiation of cell Death than the contemporary forgetting of biologists of "programmed" cell Death along with their "incapacity" to read in German. So the work of the Pasteurian Metchnikoff on muscular phagocytosis anticipates on the one hand the equivocity of factors that are disclosed in the framework of recent research. But Metchnikoff did not take advantage of it for theoretical consequences of the duality--normal and pathological--of muscular phagocytosis because this was not his aim. ⋯ It designs a field of observations that has its autonomy in comparison with actual issues on cell Death. On the contrary, the Weismann-Goette debate is closer to today. Behind the opposition of organisms that would be immortals and organisms whose mortality would lie in the necessity to reproduce themselves with the intention to rejuvenate, appears a debate initiated at that time and which now comes to its maturity between Darwinians who support a secondary death and those who support a more equivocal conception where Life and Death associate in depth but still do not mix.
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For centuries bath-houses and barber-surgeons formed such an integral part of public life that one is mystified by their vanishing from modern view with hardly any trace left. Previous authors have offered a variety of reasons for this disappearance: the bath-houses' notorious reputation, developing fuel-shortage, the "new" fashion of taking the waters and the outbreak of previously unknown contagious diseases are among those mentioned most frequently. ⋯ Sceptical philosophy discarded the wisdom of the ancient medical authorities replacing traditional steam-bathing with "modern" cold-bathing. Society itself was subject to equally revolutionary changes: the local masters of the trade had to make room for surgeons educated at medical schools setting the stage for a new reality which has become "normal" to us.
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Biography Historical Article
[Zurich physician-pharmacist family Lavater and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe].
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the connections between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and the physician and pharmacist family Lavater in Zurich. The analysis of the correspondence between Johann Bartholomäus Trommsdorff (1770-1837) and the Lavater family and between the Lavater family and the government of the duchy of Weimar shows an interesting story about a picture "Goethe in Italy".