Travelers, Patent Medicines, and Pharmacopeias: American Pharmacy and British India, 1857 to 1931

British in India

From humble beginnings the Britain Empire slowly expanded over several centuries, with India becoming “the jewel in the crown” after 1857.¹ By then Britain had already been trading with India for several centuries. The East India Company had been granted its Charter in 1600 by Queen Elizabeth I, initially for fifteen years, giving it exclusive trading rights with all the countries located beyond the Cape of Good Hope. Over the years that followed Britain slowly established a foothold in India through its trading bases in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, gaining territory through agreement or battle. The Company only ceased trading on 1 January 1874, 274 years after its formation.² In that time large numbers of people traveled to India; around 183,000 arrived in India by ship between 1857 and 1947.³

The term “British India” referred to a vast swathe of Asia, incorporating what is today not only India but also Pakistan and Bangladesh, prior to partition in 1947. For many years it also applied to a large part of Myanmar (Burma); in 1824 a small part of Burma came under British India control, and by 1886 almost two thirds of the country had done so. This arrangement lasted until 1937, when Burma began being administered as a separate British colony. The territory of British India reached its greatest extent in the early twentieth century, when it extended as far west as the frontiers of Iran (then Persia); to Afghanistan in the northwest; to Tibet in the northeast; and to China, French Indo-China (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) and Thailand (Siam) in the east. It also included the Colony of Aden in the Arabian Peninsula. But the term “British India” did not apply to other countries in the region which came under British influence, including Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), which was defined separately as a British Crown colony, or to the Maldives Islands, which were a British Protectorate.

After the 1857 Indian Mutiny, Britain built up its military presence in India and sent out an army of administrators, engineers, doctors, and many others. Britain began to build the infrastructure needed to administer such a vast region. British officials were located in every district, in order to maintain law and order, and at the same time to establish a peaceful coexistence for all. Intermediaries were used in an attempt to get closer to the people. In order to strengthen their administration the British authorities encouraged Europeans to live and work in India. By the 1860s waves of Englishmen were arriving in India to build railways and cotton mills and to establish coffee and tea plantations. Great effort went into improving India’s transport and trading facilities to ensure a sustainable future.⁴

Initially migrants to India usually went out in a mail boat, a hazardous trip lasting several months. But travel became much easier from the middle of the nineteenth century, as sailing ships were replaced by more reliable and quicker steamships; and in 1869 the Suez Canal was opened, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Instead of the four-month voyage via Cape Town, British visitors could get to India in less than three weeks. Regular passages between Britain and India were instituted by companies such as the British India Line, Cunard, and the Pacific & Orient Steamship Company.

Origins of British Pharmacy in India

Those who went out to India expected to have available to them the full range of services and amenities that were available in England; this included access to chemists and druggists and the wide range of products normally stocked by them. In fact, English pharmacies were firmly established in India well before the start of the Raj. The first one was opened in Lal Bazar in Calcutta in 1811.⁵ It was opened by a Scottish chemist and druggist by the name of Bathgate. We know little about him, but his business prospered. He quickly moved to a more spacious site, where the premises were described as “the prettiest pharmacy in India.”⁶ The basis of the business was prescription services and toilet requisites, although later on it added a photographic department, and began manufacturing a range of products including aerated waters, galenicals, and biologicals. The company eventually opened a number of branches, and continued to thrive well into the twentieth century.

The success of Bathgate’s enterprise soon attracted the interest of others. Sometime after 1812 a small apothecary’s shop was opened in Radha Baza Street in Calcutta by two British surgeons, John Robinson and James Williamson. A third partner, Dr. John Smith, joined them in 1826, followed by a Dr. Thomson Dowson Stanistreet in 1844, when the firm changed its name to Smith, Stanistreet and Co. This business was aimed initially at supplying the needs of apothecaries and surgeons. Weiss and Co., surgical instrument makers in London, sent out a substantial order to the firm in 1817. The company slowly developed its pharmaceutical business, although by 1869 it had started to decline, as increasing numbers of new English pharmacies were opened in Calcutta. But it was acquired by a young surgeon called Dr. Charles Noyce Kernot, and he set about turning around the fortunes of the company. He was very successful, so much so that Silas Burroughs, on his travels through India in 1883, noted that Kernot was one of several British pharmacists who had made “a very large fortune” from it.⁷ During the last decades of the nineteenth century the business expanded rapidly, recruiting increasing numbers of pharmacists from England.

Charles Frederick Baker traveled to India to join the company in 1882. He worked his way up the firm, starting as a junior assistant, progressing to principal assistant, and eventually becoming deputy manager and then manager in 1900, when he took into partnership Walter Grice who had been an assistant with the firm since 1890. Together they built it into a substantial business: by 1902 it had four pharmacies, two in Calcutta, one in Darjeerling and one in Howrah. In all over 230 assistants and servants were employed. The business was both retail and wholesale, included an aerated-water factory, manufacturing laboratories and extensive stores, and they also fitted out surgeries and supplied galenicals to the government.

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Interior of Smith, Stanistreet and Co. pharmacy in Calcutta from Chemist and Druggist in 1902. Image courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.

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Tom Bliss as pictured in Chemist and Druggist in 1902.

Scotland was the home of many of these pioneering pharmacists, including Tom Bliss, who had undertaken a four-year apprenticeship with a local chemist in Nairn, sixteen miles from Inverness. He had a longing for travel, and after arriving in Liverpool he was able to obtain a passage on board a small sailing vessel bound for Calcutta in 1863 on condition that he worked his way out. He eventually arrived at Karachi on the west coast of India. From there he took the train to Lahore, where he was met by his new employer who drove him to his quarters, which were provided free of charge.⁸ He remained on the staff of Scott Thomson in Calcutta for several years, but in 1869 he moved up country to Simla, joining the firm of E. Plomer and Co. After another four years, in 1873, the owners offered to sell their business, and he acquired an interest in it. The business did very well, and four years later, in 1877, Bliss bought another chemist’s business in Lahore, again trading under the title E. Plomer and Co. He later opened another branch in Delhi.

Growth of British Pharmacies in India

Encouragement to go out to India came by word of mouth, from correspondence and by advertisement. From the start of the Raj in 1857 stories began to emerge from India of exciting opportunities and fortunes being made. Advertisements regularly appeared in the Pharmaceutical Journal and Chemist and Druggist for pharmacists to come out to India. Indeed, the start of the Raj triggered a “pharmaceutical gold rush” to India from Britain.⁹ But there was competition from elsewhere. With the “Scramble for Africa” reaching its peak in the 1880s¹⁰ and expansion of the British Empire continuing unabated, young British pharmacists were being encouraged to disperse around the world. It became the norm. Sir George Watt, a medical doctor who went on to become an eminent professor of botany, addressed students at the School of Pharmacy in London in 1906. “It is possible that some of you may go out to India,” he noted; “many of you at all events are almost sure to leave England.”¹¹

English pharmacies spread out from the main centres of Calcutta and Bombay during the course of the 1870s and 1880s. Branches were opened wherever there was sufficient interest to sustain them, initially in the suburbs and surrounding towns. Kemp and Co. set up in business initially in Bombay in 1864, but soon opened a branch in Byculla on the outskirts of Bombay, a popular location for English and European expatriates. They later opened another one at Cumballa Hill, an up-market neighborhood in the south of Bombay, and one in Mazagaon, one of the seven islands of Bombay, today part of South Mumbai. It was an important port area where maritime companies and Anglo-Indian schools were located. Also in 1864 another English pharmacy was opened by William Treacher in Bombay. Treacher built up a very successful manufacturing and wholesaling business, and he was another of the British pharmacists whom Silas Burroughs noted had “made a very large fortune” as he traveled around India.¹²

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Kemp & Co.’s Main Premises in Bombay as pictured in the Pharmaceutical Journal in 1901. Image courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.

Fifteen years later, in 1879, Kemp opened a branch pharmacy in Poona, and in 1889 he opened another at Mahableshwar, a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra. This was a Bombay hill station which was very popular with the British. Philips and Co. opened pharmacies in Bombay and Poona in 1879, and W.E. Smith and Co. opened the first English pharmacy in Madras in 1897. Poona was the seventh largest city in India, and the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Bombay. In 1880 a Mr. Lindsay, a British pharmacist who was traveling around India and other parts of the empire, reported to Chemist and Druggist that “Poona is a very busy, intensely native town. It possesses only two English pharmacies…. Mr. Banyon is here engaged at Messeurs Treachers’ Limited, one of the largest drugstores in India. Three principal dispensaries have a large practice.”¹³

The range of items stocked by the English pharmacies was vast. The drug list alone of Thomson and Taylor ran to over three thousand items. Their catalog also included surgical instruments, chemical, physical and pharmaceutical apparatus, dental goods, electrical apparatus, microscopes, bacteriological goods, spectacles, photographic goods, medicine chests, foods and dietary preparations, aerated waters, proprietary preparations, toilet and nursery requisites, patent medicines, wines and spirits, and hospital requisites. The business developed steadily over its first thirty years, although the management changed three times owing to deaths. Chemist and Druggist regularly carried advertisements from agencies offering products to be introduced into India. Clearly, the Indian market was a lucrative and expanding one, and there were great opportunities to export British commodities to India for purchase by the large English and European populations, as well as to the more affluent Indians.

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W.E. Smith Pharmacy in Madras as pictured in Chemist and Druggist in 1897. Image courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.

Consolidation of British Pharmacy in India

A second wave of British pharmacists going to India in the 1880s and 1890s preferred to try their luck in places outside the big three cities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras and their suburbs. William Champley Kidd went out to Lucknow in 1880 as a qualified pharmacist, and after gaining experience there he started in business for himself in 1893. He was able to establish a high class retail and dispensing business in the city, and in due course he expanded into photographic sundries, in which he apparently did very well. He was also able to secure a substantial share of the wholesale trade of the district. The south of the country, in the state of Mysore, was known as cardamom territory. It was here in Bangalore that J.B. Forster set up in business in 1893. Forster had previously worked for Messrs Smith and Co. in Madras since 1888. He moved to Bangalore to manage their branch, which he did for three years. He set up his own business in small premises in April 1893, and moved to larger premises in 1895, the business having grown rapidly. He was joined in partnership by W.G. Paddock, a chemist and druggist. The hall of the retail premises was described as being splendidly fitted, with goods displayed in glass cases. The main hall had an attached dental surgery, in the charge of a British-qualified dentist. It was said that there were good arrangements for dispensing, and ample trained assistance. The firm had its own manufacturing facilities, and specialised in the production of soluble phenol and pineoline disinfectants.

English pharmacies continued to spring up in ever more distant regions of the Indian subcontinent. One of the most remote outposts of English pharmacy in India was a pharmacy business owned by Charles J. Milne, who opened a druggists and general store in Quetta, 250 miles north of Karachi, in 1889. Milne had undertaken his apprenticeship in Aberdeen, and after qualifying worked as an assistant with Duncan Flockhart in Edinburgh. From there he traveled to India, working for Bathgate and Co. in Calcutta. He remained with them for five years, in charge of their Park Street branch. From there he moved to Allahabad, now in northern India, to work for J. L. Lyell and Co. as manager of their drug department for six years, before moving to Quetta. Even there, he found competition fierce, particularly from the local bazaars. However, he did a roaring trade in bottles of sparkling soda water which he produced in his own factory, and his boast was that he imported a wider range of products from England than anyone else in the region. These products included everything from drugs and dispensing requisites to medicated soaps and perfumery, smokers requisites including cigars and tobacco, photographic chemicals and apparatus, tin ware, cutlery, glassware, and fancy goods.

Decline of British Pharmacy in India

In the late 1870s there was still no shortage of pharmacists responding to the advertisements that appeared in the journals. But things were not always as rosy as they were presented. A young pharmacist wrote to the Pharmaceutical Journal in 1882, anxious to make sure that those who might be tempted by such advertisements had an accurate picture of what to expect. He wrote, “I have very good reason for believing that considerable misapprehension exists as to the true value of the rupee, and also the cost of living in India. There are many reasons why a chemist’s assistant should be well paid on coming out to India. The climate is unhealthy and an unnatural one to a European…. Expenses, taken all round, are 100 per cent heavier than in England. An assistant is expected to do more than he is in a similar position at home; in addition to long hours, he has night and Sunday duty recurring much more frequently than at home.”¹⁴

Others gave similar warnings. A correspondent to Chemist and Druggist in 1885 wrote; “All is not gold that glitters. Let not assistants desirous of coming to the East Indies imagine that they are going to a place where they will have very little work. I can assure them that they will find nothing of the kind. Work here is every bit as hard and more trying than at home, and holidays are fewer in number…. Before an engagement is made with London agents it is important to consider the falling value of Indian money.”¹⁵

Other correspondents attempted to present a more balanced view of moving to India:

With regard to myself I have no reason to regret coming out here; I am doing fairly well, with prospects of doing better, and am enjoying my usual good health. I had a liberal increase in my salary before I had been out six months. When I came out I was put in charge of the laboratory and soda water factory. I have over thirty men and boys to look after in my two departments. Here you are practically your own master in your own department, and of course held responsible as such. I should not care to return to the life of an assistant at home again.¹⁶

By the 1890s the message was clearly getting through that life in India was not always as attractive as it was described in the advertisements, or that the prospects of getting rich were not guaranteed. There were other places to go, and interest in migrating to India declined. Chemist and Druggist felt compelled to address the issue in an editorial in 1895:

There appears to be a slackening in the response to advertisements of vacancies for assistants in India. Ten years ago it was easy to fill such vacancies, but assistants have gradually become indifferent to the allurements of the gorgeous East, and we find that the personal requests from employers for assistance have been on the increase. We have found it difficult to convince young men that India offers better opportunities than can be obtained at home, probably because we ourselves are not sure that the life of the assistant in India is altogether a happy one, or that the change from this variable climate to Indian indolence can be considered betterment to any but a chosen few.¹⁷

The journal identified two main causes for the decline in interest in migrating to India:

In the first place, it should be noted that the condition of qualified assistants at home has decidedly improved during the past five years. His certificate is no longer regarded as a drawback, but as an advantage. Salaries have gone up accordingly. In the second place salaries have remained practically stationary in India and Ceylon, although the rupee has been falling. Young pharmacists are beginning to ask what prospects there are of making a fortune in pharmacy after assistant days are over.¹⁸

Movement of Pharmacists between America, Europe, and India

These difficulties in recruiting sufficient numbers of British pharmacists willing to work in India led to attempts to persuade others to come out, including American pharmacists. In 1896 William Mair wrote to the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record encouraging American chemists and druggists to come out to India. He declared:

Whilst covenanted assistants are for the most part European, there seems no reason why Americans should not find scope for their energies in the practice of their calling here in Hindustan. The splendid pharmaceutical training available in your colleges is a valuable asset anywhere. And we want men who can find out what people want and sell it to them.¹⁹

Despite such calls, however, only rarely did American pharmacists express any interest in practicing pharmacy other than in America, although it is difficult to estimate with any accuracy the numbers who went to India. It was not always easy to identify Americans in India since, as J. A. Falck noted, “the term European applies to all foreigners in India who are of white skin”²⁰ So the “lure of the east” appears to have had little attraction for American pharmacists even if they were aware of it. Indeed, records indicate that in the second half of the nineteenth century the movement of pharmacists was much more from Europe to America than from America to Europe or Asia.²¹ Klevstrand, for example, investigated the immigration of pharmacists to Minnesota between 1885 and 1910.²² Of the 344 immigrant pharmacists during this period 223 were Scandinavians, with ninety-nine from Norway, ninety from Sweden and twenty-six from Denmark. There were also fifty-nine from Germany. But eighteen came from England, thirteen were from Ireland (which was still part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until 1922) and six were from Scotland. So not all British pharmacists were heading for the new Empire; some went to the old—America was still the land of opportunity. Many European pharmacists subsequently had a substantial influence on the practice of American pharmacy; the German Frederick Hoffmann for example played an important part in improving American chemistry and pharmacy.²³

But the attractions of practicing pharmacy in India continued to be promoted in the United States well into the twentieth century. Later American visitors were also quick to spot the opportunities. For example, Norman Rudolf and Lewis McLeod reported on pharmacy in Calcutta in the Bulletin of Pharmacy in 1913.²⁴ “Although the days of enormous profits on drugs are past” they reported, “yet Calcutta today is a veritable goldmine to the pharmacist who is prepared to deal on a large scale and to handle a great variety of preparations.” They noted that

There is no American drug store, although with the large influx of American globe trotters who visit India each year during cold weather it is probable that there might be an opening for such an establishment provided it was run on thoroughly up-to-date lines.

They noted also that,

He would not have to depend entirely upon the American cold weather visitors, as many of the English medical men are very well disposed towards the use of American drugs. Such a pharmacy entirely stocked with American goods would doubtless do a good trade.²⁵

Britain, War, and the Origins of the American Pharmaceutical Industry

American drugs had in fact found their way to India several decades before 1913. Initially they found their way in through the English pharmacies, although manufacturers soon found ways of placing them directly in the hands of doctors in India. The increasing flow of pharmaceutical products from America to India followed in the wake of the expanding American pharmaceutical industry, the origins of which in fact owe much to America’s relationship with Britain. Before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775 American pharmacy depended heavily on patent medicines imported from England.²⁶ Far from being the province of quacks the patent medicines industry in the late eighteenth century was actually a respectable alternative to both regular medicine and irregular practice, and they were greatly valued by expatriate communities.²⁷ But the curtailment of imports from the start of the Revolutionary War accelerated the compounding of English brands in America, a process that had begun in the 1750s. It continued after the war, and in the early years of the nineteenth century American manufacturers were supplying a full range of patent medicines in locally produced bottles at a fraction of the price of those imported from England.²⁸ But it was the Lititz Pharmacopoeia of 1778, produced during the war itself, that provided the first official mention of large-scale manufacture of pharmaceutical products in America.²⁹ It identified those preparations that must be prepared and compounded in a general laboratory.³⁰ This relieved the apothecaries in the field and in the general hospitals of the need to compound medicines that could more efficiently be manufactured in quantity.

These were however effectively state initiatives designed to meet an immediate local need. The private-enterprise American pharmaceutical industry had its origins slightly later. They are to be found in the small number of fine chemical companies founded in Philadelphia between 1818 and 1840.³¹ Others followed: Edward R. Squibb founded his pharmaceutical company in Brooklyn, New York in 1858. In 1887 William McLaren Bristol and John Ripley Myers, purchased a struggling drug manufacturing firm in Clinton to form Bristol-Myers. The war with Mexico between 1846 and 1848 and the later American Civil War between 1861 and 1865 both presented threats and opportunities for the pharmaceuticals business. War conditions encouraged manufacturers to produce on an increasingly large scale. During the American Civil War the Army Medical Department purchased huge quantities of medicines as a response to fears about price fluctuations and unreliability in supplies of imported drugs.³² Wyeth Brothers alone sold over $657,000 worth of chemicals, drugs, and medical supplies to the Army during this period.³³

Drug manufacturing in the United States began to move to mass production techniques after the middle of the nineteenth century. Mass production quickly transformed not only the American pharmaceutical industry but also the practice of pharmacy in many parts of the world.³⁴ With the end of the American Civil War many manufacturers found themselves over-stocked and over-equipped. Peace provided new opportunities to expand product ranges and to develop new markets. The number of establishments manufacturing medicines, extracts and drugs rose from 173 to 292 between 1860 and 1870.³⁵ But in America the size of the market was limited at least some extent by the conservatism of pharmacists. In 1930 Jacob Flexner recalled that “fifty years ago [i.e., around 1880] no first-class pharmacist would have thought of depending upon the great manufacturing firms to supply his tinctures, fluid extracts and capsules. We manufactured our own.”³⁶ In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was a marked shift from patent medicines usually containing many ingredients to mass-produced branded products often with a single active ingredient. Some manufacturers looked to develop markets beyond the United States, to the rest of the American continent and the Caribbean, to Europe and especially Britain, and beyond Europe to the Indian sub-continent and Asia. For them India represented an important export opportunity. They were well aware that the volume of business between Britain and India was enormous, and that trade in drugs was no small part of the total.

Promoting American Drugs in India: Exhibitions, Agents, and Advertisements

Those American pharmaceutical companies that spotted the opportunity for a profitable business in Asia needed to take appropriate action to promote their products.³⁷ A major opportunity for promoting American pharmaceutical products arose from the popularity of international exhibitions. The success of the Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Place in London in 1851 prompted the promotion of others in India and elsewhere, including ones aimed at specific audiences. The first International Congress of Hygiene and Demography took place in Bombay in 1891; and the first Indian Medical Congress followed in 1894. But the first big attraction for American pharmaceutical manufacturers was the announcement of a Calcutta International Exhibition, to be held in 1883-84. As at the Great Exhibition in London the exhibits, which included both preparations and equipment, would be judged and awards would be made.

Some idea of the range of both products and manufacturers exhibiting can be gained from reports in the American pharmaceutical press at the time. In 1884 American Druggist reported the awards made at the Calcutta International Exhibition. A first class certificate and gold medal was awarded to the Maltine Manufacturing Company for Maltine and various preparations thereof, including beef peptonoids. A first certificate and silver medal was awarded to McKesson and Robbins for capsules and pills, and to Professor J.P. Remington of Philadelphia for a pharmaceutical still. Two second certificates and bronze medals were awarded, the first to John Wyeth and Brother for dialysed iron, hypodermic tablets and compound tablets, among others; and the second to the Enterprise Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia for the Enterprise Tincture Press. A third certificate was awarded to the Fellows Medical Manufacturing Company for Fellows Syrup of the Hypophosphates. A fourth certificate was awarded to Lanman and Kemp for sarsaparilla. Finally, fifth certificates were awarded for Horsford’s Acid Phosphates, to Dr. Ayer and Company for sarsaparilla, and to C.A. Vogeler and Company for St Jacob’s Oil.³⁸ It seems that every entrant received a certificate of some classification. However, entry receipt of an award not only raised the profile of the product but also conveyed at least some assurance of quality and reliability in the minds of potential customers.

Following promotion at the International Exhibition the usual next step was to appoint an agent who would be traveling around India visiting doctors and pharmacists; such agents generally represented several companies. One such representative was an Englishman, Charles Wagner. In 1886 the Indian correspondent of Chemist and Druggist reported that “Mr. Charles Wagner, representing Messrs. Lynch and Co. and other firms, has reached this quarter of the globe on his round-the-world trip. He remains in Bombay until 1st January, and then leaves for Kurrachee [sic, i.e., Karachi] en route for Lahore, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and San Francisco. He expects to be away from England two years.”³⁹ Lynch and Co. had recently patented a new improved stethoscope.⁴⁰

American Patent Medicines and the Indian Market

The exhibition and the follow-up visits clearly had a significant impact. According to Falck, writing in 1887,

American patent medicines have a very large sale, and among the non-secret preparations Parke Davis and Co.’s Fluid Extracts and McKesson and Robbin’s Capsuled Pills have become best known. The quantity of McKesson and Robbin’s Quinine Capsules that are sold is marvellous…. To sell them in bottles of one hundred is of very frequent occurrence.⁴¹

The thriving European pharmacy businesses in India imported substantial quantities of medicines and other products associated with the chemist’s trade, most of which had been used extensively in the west for many years.

Messrs Smith, Stanistreet and Co. acted as sole appointed agents for a range of American proprietaries for Bengal and the north west territories. These included Fellows Syrup of Hypophosphites, Perry Davis’ Pain Killer, and Dr. James C. Ayer and Co.’s preparations (including his Sarsaparilla and Cherry Pectoral).

Ayer was a pioneer of almanacs associated with proprietary medicines. His American Almanacs traveled further than any other.⁴² In 1889 his own publishing plant was turning out 100,000 almanacs a day, in twenty-one languages which included Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese, Burmese, and the Gujarati dialect of India.⁴³ Messrs Smith, Stanistreet and Co. also acted as sole appointed agents for Armour and Co.’s digestives and diatetic goods, and McKesson and Robbins capsuled pills. They also handled a wide range of Frederick Stearnes and Co.’s galenicals.⁴⁴ Other American products imported included those of Parke Davis and Co., Wyeth’s preparations, and Fairchild Digestive preparations (which were handled by Messrs. Burroughs Wellcome and Co. of London). There was also Valentine’s meat juice, and the goods of Seabury and Johnson, and Johnson & Johnson, and Whitall, Tatum and Co.’s glassware and sundries.

By the 1890s British dominance of the Indian drug trade was already being challenged by manufacturers from other countries including the United States. In 1895 Calcutta and Bombay together imported $1.5 million worth of drugs and items related to the druggist.⁴⁵ Before the First World War Britain supplied India with more than 60 per cent of her imports; but her share of total Indian imports continued to fall, reaching 45 per cent by 1928-29.⁴⁶ Other trading partners, including the United States, made up an increasing proportion of Indian imports; indeed, there was a thriving and rapidly growing trade in American pharmaceutical products, mainly patent medicines and manufactured galenicals which was well established by the end of the nineteenth century.

American patent medicines were heavily advertised in India, and they formed a substantial part of India’s imports from America. An insight into their success in India was provided by William Mair in 1896 in the pages of the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record:

None are more susceptible than the Indian people to the gentle art of advertising, especially when augmented with something artistic in red and yellow, depicting one or other of the mythological creations that are supposed to have dominion over their destinies.⁴⁷ Fellows Syrup takes the lead as the most popular proprietary medicine in India today. Perry Davis’ Pain Killer and Scott’s Emulsion come next, and among others are Seigel’s Syrup, with offices in Bombay and Calcutta.⁴⁸

The list of American products did not stop there. Besides Ayer’s preparations and the others already listed they included Warner’s Safe Cure for liver ailments, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Wells “Rough On” lines, Cuticura ointment, St Jacob’s Oil, and Battle’s Bromidia and other products. Toiletries and cosmetics included Colgate’s range of products, Lundborg’s and Ricksecker’s perfumeries, and Murray and Lanman’s Florida Water. Mair considered that there were enormous opportunities to expand the market for American patent medicines in India.

There is no end of a great future for these and other enterprises, which have as yet only touched upon the fringe of what is possible for them. There are 300,000,000 of a population in India, and certainly 200,000 of them who are as poor as rats and cannot afford to buy patent medicines, but there are the remaining 100,000,000 who can.⁴⁹

It was not only drug manufacturers who spotted a valuable new market. American journal publishers found a ready market in India too. In August 1896 the Journal of Materia Medica, a monthly journal of therapeutics and practice published in Terre Haute, Indiana, was advertised in the Indian Journal of Pharmacy, for “one dollar a year, in advance.”⁵⁰ Secondary companies that met the needs of drug companies also stepped forward. The Pharmaceutical Era in 1903 reported that

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Burgoyne, Burbridges & Co. Promotional Calendar, 1914.

the well-known drug store advertising company, M.P. Gould and Company of New York City, who are furnishing so many druggists in this country with advertising, are also meeting with great success in foreign fields. They inform us that their system… is now used by druggists in India.⁵¹

By the early twentieth century trade was sufficiently robust to justify ever more elaborate promotion at medical exhibitions in India by American medical, surgical, as well as pharmaceutical suppliers. In 1909 the British Chemist and Druggist reported at length from the Bombay Medical Congress and Exhibition.

Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, N.J., occupied Stand 38, where their J. & J. Red Cross Absorbent Cotton was specially prominent…. Surgical requisites, such as ligatures, lints and dressings were also well displayed, and a model operating theatre in the grounds was stocked with these products.⁵²

Other American manufacturers were also well represented:

Parke Davis and Co. made quite an extensive display, embracing standardised liquid extracts, adrenalin preparations, cascara compounds, chloretone, taka-diastase preparations, germicidal soap, codrenine, thermofuge, a full line of palatable preparations, tablets, capsules and the products of the house generally. The medical profession manifested great interest in the display of new products, such as antigonococcic serum, lactone tablets and bacterial vaccines.⁵³

Frederick Stearns and Co. of Detroit, Michigan, exhibited their range through an agent, Messrs. N. Powell and Co. Products on display included Stearn’s wine of cod liver oil, Tritipalm, Vibutero, and Kasagra, “samples of which were handed or posted to medical men. The exhibit also contained specimens of the firms’ other galenical and physiological products.”⁵⁴

The market for American drug products was not restricted to European doctors and pharmacists in India. In their 1913 report Rudolf and McLeod observed that “there are in Calcutta not less than 150 native pharmacies in which European and American drugs are used, and as a rule they seem to do fairly well.”⁵⁵ They noted that although American manufacturers entered the field much later than the houses of other countries:

It is difficult to find in a town such as Calcutta a dispensary where at least a few bottles of American drugs are not to be found. Native chemists to whom a few years ago America was as much a terra incognita as if Columbus had never lived are today to be found as regular importers and users of preparations bearing that eye-gladdening inscription made in America.⁵⁶

But for the mass of the Indian population American products were unheard of even in the 1930s. “Millions of people in India have never heard of the types of medicine known in America,” reported Tile and Pill. “They depend upon the ‘medicine man’ and various gods to cure them when they become ill.”⁵⁷

But at least some of them would have been exposed to western medicines through local dispensaries. From the start of the British Raj in 1857 the government was anxious to provide basic health care to as many of the local population as possible. Quinine was seen as the only effective remedy for fever, and the government took steps to minimize prices and ensure that “the alkaloids shall be prepared at so low a rate as to be within the reach of all.”⁵⁸ By 1873 all the large towns had richly endowed and well regulated hospitals, partly supported by the government and partly by private subscriptions. In the North West Provinces alone there were 90 civil hospitals and 41 dispensaries. “In Bengal there are 160 dispensaries, and certain medicines are distributed over the country and supplied to villages, so as to be sold at cost price.”⁵⁹ In the Punjab there were 110 hospitals and dispensaries, in the Central Provinces 192 dispensaries, and in Bombay there were 121 dispensaries. The local dispensaries were all fertile ground for the sale of American drug products, which were also heavily advertised directly to the pharmaceutical profession in India. Western medicine was promoted as something that was practiced in civilized countries.⁶⁰ For example, the May 1920 number of the Indian and Eastern Druggist carried a quarter page advertisement from the Denver Chemical Manufacturing Company of New York for Antiphlogistine. This was described as “the largest selling ethical proprietary in the world; it has the endorsement of the leading medical authorities and is used and prescribed by physicians in every civilised country.”⁶¹

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Images of “Bombay Drug Houses” from William Mair’s 1896 article “Pharmacy in India” in American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record.

The Life of the American Drug Traveler in British India

Americans who traveled to India as medicine salesmen experienced something of a culture shock. The life of an American drug salesman in India was vividly described by Robert Rowlette Martin in 1903. He was the representative in the Far East for Frederick Stearns and Company of Detroit, and was based in Bombay. In addition to India he also covered South Africa, in partnership with a Mr. Elgin under the name of Elger and Martin, with headquarters in Cape Town. Elger and Martin were said to be intimate friends of Jack Buell, the traveler for Parke Davis and Company.⁶²

Martin described the frustrations of business practices in India:

Business is done in the early morning hours. Generally, my broker, my servant and myself leave the hotel at Bombay at six; it is daylight there at four. We drive down, reaching the bazaars in about thirty minutes. The bazaars are all side by side, and vary in buying capacity only. But there are no secrets between them. The small dealer gets the same discount as the big one…. By eleven in the morning we have visited the leading buyers and received assurances that something is doing and that if I can come down tomorrow they will tell me when I may come down again. Each has a tale [to tell] about how that last case of wine or cod liver oil only contained ten bottles, how the ants ate the headache cure, how the kasagra got broken—and so it goes. You chat along with your native friend; he inquires about everything under the sun and nothing about business, and then with a twinkle in his eye he politely dismisses you with; “Sahib, if you will come in tomorrow I will tell you when you can come again.” Oh it is so slow.⁶³

Martin also reflected on some of the local customs that he encountered.

There is a rule or custom as old as the Koran that if a native admires any article you possess you must at once present him with it. In the course of my visits in the East I have given away at least two dozen Waterman pens, simply through large dealers admiring my own pen.

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Photograph of “Booths in the Drug Bazaar, Lahore, India” in Robert R. Martin’s 1903 article “A Word from India” in Pharmaceutical Era.

He also noted many little courtesies in business, “sadly lacking on this side of Asia [i.e., the U.S.] and which make life in the Orient very pleasant. When you are leaving a city like Bombay the native dealers all come in the evening together, and give you a small silver holder of attar of roses and place a garland of flowers around your neck.”⁶⁴ He suggested that the transfer of this custom to New York might be a welcome addition to business practices there.

The Movement of American Pharmacists to Great Britain

Another means of accessing the markets of British India was by establishing pharmaceutical businesses in Britain itself, although this was rarely the main intention of those who did so. Notable amongst Americans opting to set up pharmaceutical companies in Europe rather than the United States were Silas Burroughs and Henry Wellcome, two American pharmacists who established their new company, Burroughs Wellcome, in London in 1879. When Burroughs invited Wellcome to join him in business, modern drug production was in fact an undeveloped field in both Britain and America. In 1843 William Brockedon had been granted a patent for the invention of a simple tableting machine, and John Wyeth and his brother Frank in Philadelphia hired him to make compressed medicines using the same technique. These offered a much safer, standardized dose than medicines prepared by other means, and soon became popular. Other American manufacturers soon joined in, and attempted to improve production methods. But still in Britain at the time there were few large manufacturing drug companies, very few medicines were produced on a large scale, and pharmacists still used traditional methods for preparing medicines.

Burroughs realized that he might be able to make his fortune by importing compressed pills made by Wyeth in the United States and marketing them in England and Europe. He wrote to Wellcome inviting him to join the venture. Wellcome insisted that Burroughs obtain Wyeth’s consent to the partnership before signing; Burroughs also offered to act as the agent for other American pharmaceutical companies. In April 1880 he received a contract from McKesson and Robbins giving him exclusive agency to sell their products in “Europe, Asia, Africa, East Indies and Australia.” He arrived in London in May 1880. A deed of partnership between the men was signed and they set up offices in Snow Hill in London. For both it was their first time in England, and inevitably they found the culture rather different to that in America. They were not the first to experience such differences, and the clash of cultures resulting from the arrival of Americans in London in the late nineteenth century has been vividly described by Warren.⁶⁵

Burroughs and Wellcome were both consummate salesmen and publicists, and the company flourished in its first year of trading. Burroughs was Wyeth’s sole agent in London and had been importing and marketing pharmaceuticals since 1878. He began “the Americanisation of the British drug trade”⁶⁶ by pursuing the marketing policy adopted by Wyeth in the United States, i.e., “detailing” doctors, issuing samples, and heavy advertising. Between 1880 and 1886 Burroughs and Wellcome recruited a total of thirteen travelers to maintain a sales force of between four and five, since few stayed longer than a year. Of the three Americans appointed one remained with the company for some years; at the beginning of the partnership Wellcome approached an American friend William Shepperson with a view to persuading him to join them in London. Shepperson did so, and set about enthusiastically promoting the young company, including at the International Medical and Sanitary Exhibition held in London in 1881. The company’s display emphasized its role in promoting “American Improvements in Pharmacy.”

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Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. exhibit at the 1881 International Medical and Sanitary Exhibition in London. Photograph courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London.

Shepperson was one of Burrough’s most effective salesmen during the 1880s, and after two years as “an energetic and successful traveler in Britain” he was sent to India to supervise the highly ambitious Burroughs Wellcome stand at the 1883 Calcutta Exhibition.⁶⁷ Given the newness of the company this was an enormously bold move. He would then be responsible for promoting the company’s products in India. He completed a long and fruitful tour of India before going on to Australia to be the first manager of the newly established Melbourne branch.⁶⁸ Some non-pharmaceutical products were registered under different company names to conceal any association with Burroughs Wellcome and Co. The Kepler Malt Extract Company was first registered as a trademark in London in May 1879. By 1883 it had also been registered in nine European countries, the United States, Canada, New South Wales, and India.⁶⁹

Visits by travelers could also generate ideas for new products by the company. One such idea that Burroughs could claim credit for was the medicine chest, a small, carefully selected collection of medicines and first aid equipment packed in a portable case, and intended for self-medication in remote areas. The idea was suggested by Dr. Valentine, superintendent at the mission in Agra which Burroughs visited while in India in 1882. Burroughs asked Wellcome back in London to put together a prototype and send it to Valentine to try out at the Agra mission. In addition to compressed medicines such as cholera tablets and ipecacuanha for dysentery, it contained bandages, absorbent cotton, and adhesive plaster, not all manufactured by Burroughs Wellcome and Co.⁷⁰ A decade later, they became the first drug company to employ research scientists to develop new therapies.

Burroughs discovered that colonial chemists strongly objected to the retail prices of goods being printed on wrappers or circulars; he gave instructions to discontinue the practice.⁷¹

Invariably duty was payable on importation in addition to carriage costs. In India he found that druggists paid little attention to price; there was no difference to them as they added their profit on to the cost of the article whatever it was. Burroughs was impressed by the implications of cultural factors for the potential to develop trade in pharmaceuticals. Although the population of India was large Burroughs reckoned the numbers of potential customers for the company’s products was small since (in 1882), “the majority of the natives… send for a native doctor or priest when sick for incantations and administration of bugs, reptiles, and native roots enough to frighten or kill any but the natives who have got used to such things.”⁷² Affordability was also a problem among an impoverished population. The potential market for drugs was limited to the European populations, of whom Burroughs reckoned, nine-tenths were government employees or missionaries.

The medical civil service and the British Indian army, including the hospitals associated with them, were supplied through medical storekeepers. Through this channel to the civil and military markets, the government in India sent large quantities of drugs. Burroughs described the government as the world’s largest wholesaler. Free hospitals and dispensaries in almost every town tended to undermine the local dispensing trade because medicine was free for civil servants and the military. Burroughs’s target was formal recognition of the company’s products by the Indian government. He wrote; “we would hardly need any more business if the Indian Medical Department would take them up.” Having learned that the government usually purchased whatever the doctors ordered from the medical store, Burroughs visited all doctors on the army and navy register. This initiative marked the beginning of a flourishing trade that in 1901 was perceived from the London office to offer an “almost unlimited possibility of business.” Demand was for the Kepler goods, Beef and Iron Wine, Tabloids, and Fellows Syrup Hypophosphites. The Bombay depot became a branch in 1912.⁷³

Pharmacopeias, Formularies, and Non-patent Medicines

Supplying non-patent pharmaceuticals in India presented more of a challenge to American manufacturers. Large numbers of non-patent pharmaceuticals were in use in India, and there was a need to meet a variety of pharmacopoeial standards. A Pharmacopoeia of India had been published in 1868, four years after publication of the first edition of the British Pharmacopoeia in 1864, which itself had replaced the previous London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Pharmacopoeias.⁷⁴ But with publication of the third edition of the British Pharmacopoeia in 1885 the government declared it to be “the sole authority on all matters relating to pharmacy in India,” and the Pharmacopoeia of India was suppressed.⁷⁵ An Indian and Colonial Addendum to the fourth edition of the British Pharmacopoeia, which had been published in 1898, appeared in 1900, and a Government of India version of the Addendum was published in 1901, which took account of both religious and climate considerations. By the time the fifth edition of the British Pharmacopoeia was published in 1914 it was considered to be “suitable for the whole Empire.”⁷⁶

Those British pharmacists who had migrated to India usually returned frequently to the United Kingdom to keep up to date with developments there. In 1885 Chemist and Druggist reported that “Dr. C. N. Kernot annually visits Europe and thus keeps himself and his firm fully acquainted with all western novelties.”⁷⁷ European pharmacists in India, who included a small number from France, Germany, and other countries, tended to rely heavily on reference books from their home country, but American publications also had their place. According to Falck, writing in 1887,

The British Pharmacopoeia is the standard, but many Indian medicines are prescribed, and there is an Indian Pharmacopoeia which is unofficial. Many American preparations are used, and the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) is to be found in every drug store.⁷⁸

The drug products listed as being supplied by Kernot included a number that were imported from America; in 1889 Chemist and Druggist reported that “Messrs. Stearns of Detroit, USA, like the Germans, are selling BP extracts at half the price charged by English houses.”⁷⁹

It is perhaps surprising that the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) was “to be found in every drug store” in India, since it had “no officiality as a legally enforceable standard before the Federal law of 1906… although physicians and pharmacists for decades had termed the USP their ‘official’ guide.”⁸⁰ The British Pharmacopoeia, on the other hand, was published under the authority of the General Medical Council since its first edition in 1864, and its authority in India was endorsed by the Government of India. In 1903 Martin also commented on the non-proprietary pharmaceutical products he sold.

You find most of the proprietary medicines of America and England exploited there, and you find largely the pharmaceutical preparations of the British Pharmacopoeia. Any American house that attempts to appeal for business in India must be ready to put in a complete line of British pharmacopoeial products. This means a very large investment.⁸¹

The great trouble with the native dealer, he claimed, was his complete disregard of any agreements made and the due dates of bills, although in the end he usually paid up. “But when you consider the credit extended by German, French and English houses [often up to 12 months] you will agree with me that the inducement is not great for American houses.”

American formularies too found a place in India in providing information about a much wider selection of drugs than that provided by the pharmacopoeias. In discussing the origins of the National Formulary, Edward G. Feldmann noted that at that time “the USP of the 1870s and early 1880s was very selective in the articles that it recognized for inclusion” and that “there was virtually no drug industry in the modern sense of the term and almost all dispensed products were compounded by the pharmacist (or physician) in the local pharmacy or medical office.”⁸² The need for supplementary references that augmented the drugs included in pharmacopoeias had long been recognized, but equally pharmacopoeias usually contained many items that the vast majority of physicians would never use. Indeed, when the first edition of the USP was published in 1820 the preface acknowledged that

the number of articles necessary for the management of diseases, and especially of those which any individual physician actually employs, is always very far short of the catalogue afforded by most pharmacopoeias…. In consequence of reason of this sort, many articles contained in European books have been omitted in the American Pharmacopoeia.⁸³

There were some benefits in using American rather than British texts. Stieb noted that “the British Pharmacopoeia was in many ways a poor standard, compared to European and American official compendia, but it was nevertheless a standard.”⁸⁴ The problem of pharmaceutical standards remained unsolved, he noted, until the end of the nineteenth century when it became possible scientifically to develop precise standards of purity for many drugs of vegetable and animal origin for the first time. But pharmacopoeias sometimes played roles beyond simply the laying down of official standards. The British Pharmacopoeia was used as an instrument of imperialism.⁸⁵ Cartwright notes the comment in the 1999 Cunningham Report on the future of the BP that it was also an instrument of economic development.⁸⁶

By the 1920s both the British and American Pharmacopoeias had established places in Indian pharmacy practice, but they were not the only influences. Indeed, writing about the history of drugs in India presents many challenges, not least the changing content and standards of indigenous medicines.⁸⁷ Writing about Ayervedic medicine from Bombay in 1923 D. B. Kirtiker noted that

Mautic-bhasma, i.e. pearl ash… is a guaranteed remedy for general debility and allied troubles. The powder is called the choorna, and some of these powders exactly tally with the USP or BP; as for instance, the Hirda-beda-choorna, which is equivalent to the cathartic compound preparation; Snamuklir-choorna which is compound senna powder, and jestimudh-choorna, which is liquorice powder.⁸⁸

A range of chemical medicines, including potassium nitrate, silver nitrate, and ferrous sulphate, “are found not a whit lacking in the proper chemical standards and can stand the USP tests.” As a matter of fact, he adds, “most of the chemicals and drugs coming from Indian sources and given in the BP and BPC were taken directly from the native Indian pharmacists and physicians, namely Gandhis and Vaidyas.”⁸⁹ Indeed, some of the latest remedies, including oil of chaulmoogra, thymol, and some colloids, had found their way into the BP and BPC through this source.

India as a Source of Crude Drugs for both Britain and America

Such comparison of the quality of indigenous medicines against BP and USP standards highlights the extent to which drugs used in both Britain and the United States originated in India. There had long been a flow of drugs from the New World to Europe, many of which entered regular practice; and in the eighteenth century many products such as theriaca were widely used in both England and America.⁹⁰ Most of the opium used in America came from India. In 1872 some 416,000 pounds of opium were imported into the United States for use in the treatment of sore throats, inflammations, diarrhoea, sprains, coughs, and sundry other disabilities.⁹¹ Large quantities were used by pharmaceutical manufacturers. Opium could only be imported if it contained the legal minimum 9 per cent of morphine, but this was open to fraud. Importers could process the imported item to order as “standardised opium” containing any morphine percentage ordered and priced accordingly. Edward R. Squibb found cases of opium ordered as 8 per cent morphine which were found on assay to contain about 6 per cent. He suggested that opium should be bought per unit of morphine to foil the abuse.⁹² By 1874, of the 218 plant drugs listed by Flückiger and Hanbury in Pharmacographia,⁹³ no fewer than twenty-seven, or 12.4 per cent, originated in the New World.⁹⁴ Indeed there had been a thriving trade in medicines between Britain and India during the two and a half centuries before the Raj, and many of these drugs emanated originally from the New World.⁹⁵ There was nevertheless a strong feeling that many medicinal treasures of plant origin remained undiscovered in India, and that there were opportunities to make fortunes by uncovering them. In 1903 the Pharmaceutical Review reported on an article that had been published in the Times of Assam, which dealt with “the wealth lying dormant in the cultivation and preparation of the indigenous drugs of India.”⁹⁶ Such drugs had been highlighted in the 1901 Indian and Colonial Addendum to the British Pharmacopoeia 1898, but had been ignored by Indian businessmen. The author of the article argued that the expansion of the Indian drug trade that should have followed did not take place. The chemistry and therapeutics of some of the more important drugs of Indian origin required greater investigation, and this needed to be done by Indian firms. The article claimed that “the time is importune, for agents of foreign firms are on the spot collecting samples and all available information.”⁹⁷ Indeed, colonialism in places such as India transformed medicine in the west as a result of the surveys carried out into indigenous medicines, usually of plant origin.⁹⁸ Messrs. Kemp and Co. shipped large quantities of Indian drugs to both the British and American markets. By 1928-29 around 2,000 tons of nux vomica was being shipped annually from India to the UK, Germany, Holland, France, Belgium, and the United States.⁹⁹ Items were also imported from a range of other countries. Imports from Germany increased substantially in the last decade of the nineteenth century, consisting mainly of chemicals, quinine, tinctures, aniline dyes, glassware, instruments, and apparatus.

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“Rear View of Kemp & Co.’s Pharmacy, Bombay, Showing Native Workmen” from American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record, 1904.

Migration from India to America and Europe

While increasing numbers of Americans went out to India it appears to have been extremely rare for Indian pharmacists to migrate to the United States at this time, even if they were among the few who went as far west as the United Kingdom to gain their qualification. Only after the end of the First World War did a small number travel to the US to further their education. One such was Mahadeva Lal Schroff, who studied first at the Engineering College of the Banares Hindu University, qualifying in 1920 before traveling to the US in 1921. He studied chemical engineering at the State University of Iowa in 1923, before taking a degree in chemistry at Cornell University at Ithaca, New York between 1923 and 1926. In February 1926 he was admitted as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he was awarded an MSc degree in 1927. He went onto become a leading figure in pharmaceutical chemistry in India. But Schroff was the exception rather than the rule.¹⁰⁰ By the mid-1930s the number of Indian pharmacists who had been trained in America was still only a trickle. In 1935 men in the drug business in India reported that “there are not more than a half-dozen Indian pharmacists in that great country, and they obtained their diplomas either in Europe or America.”¹⁰¹

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Senior picture of Mahadeva Lal Schroff from Cornell University’s 1926 Cornellian annual yearbook. Schroff was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club and the Deutscher Verein while at Cornell.