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Item of the Month, September 2010: Articles of Partnership
Today marks the anniversary – 130 years ago today – of the signing of this legal contract by two young American pharmaceutical salesmen: Henry Solomon Wellcome and Silas Mainville Burroughs. The document described the business partnership that the two men… Continue reading
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25th July 1936
On this day in 1936, the death was announced of Sir Henry Wellcome. Over his 82 years, Wellcome had overseen the growth of the pharmaceutical company he had co-founded into a multinational concern. Part of the fortune he made from… Continue reading
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Wellcome in Space
Over the last few weeks, there have been many commemorations in the media of the 40th anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. We thought we would add to this by flagging up an item from… Continue reading
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One hundred years since the ‘Magic Bullet’
In 1909 Paul Ehrlich, working with his Japanese student Sahachiro Hata at the National Institute for Experimental Therapeutics in Frankfurt, discovered that the 606th substance tested in their attempts to discover a specific chemotherapeutic agent to cure syphilis, the arsphenamine… Continue reading
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Espionage and forgery in the Wellcome Library
The papers of the Wellcome Foundation Archive – which cover the development of Henry Wellcome’s pharmaceutical business – are not the place you would expect to find a tale of international espionage befitting the pages of a John Buchan novel.… Continue reading