摘要：

The rise of the health products and modern pharmaceutical industry based originally on coal-tar derivatives may be dated to the end of the 19th century. At that time, new medicaments were created out of a symbiosis of science and, the mainly organic, chemical industry which — due to the mechanisms of competition — were subject to ongoing changes and needs for improvement. The industrial historian Wolfgang Wimmer summarized his study on the "Gesundheitswesen and die Innovationen der Pharma-Industrie in Deutschland" [The Health Service and Innovations of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Germany] between 1880 and 1935 with a statement that harks back to the advertising slogans of the very companies he was writing about: "We almost always have something new available."1 This not only refers to the rather hectic dynamics of innovation that are observed within such companies but also to an attitude that demonstrates the awareness of and tendency towards progress for the entire era. Representatives of the pharmaceutical industry were soon able to point with some pride to the fact that they were now fortunate enough to speak of "some diseases which a few decades ago were dangerous epidemics ... in the past tense."2

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