Article ID: CBB001451058

Penicillin and the European Response to Post-War American Hegemony: The Case of Leo-Penicillin (2014)

unapi

Cozzoli, Danielle (Author)


History and Technology
Volume: 30, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 83-103
Publication date: 2014
Language: English


In post-war years, penicillin played a fundamental role in radically changing the system of pharmaceutical research and production, with US firms and research centres taking the lead. As with other areas of science and technology it also became a domain in which European actors sought to adapt to and counter US policies and practices of hegemony, becoming part of a broader pattern of US--European relationships during the Cold War. Three European companies succeeded in catching up with the Anglo-American companies and became large antibiotics producers. This paper reconstructs the story of one of them, Løvens Kemiske Fabrik (now Leo Pharma), and of its Leo-penicillin, focusing on previously unexplored material from Leo Pharma corporate archives and on other archival sources. Løven's case is particularly interesting, because the Danish firm had no substantial pre-war expertise in fermentation, the key technical skill required in penicillin production. More specifically, the argument is that the choices of pharmaceutical companies played a major role in the European answer to the invasion of American penicillin, finding market, rather than state-sponsored, methods to counter US hegemony. This response, though, also highlighted the limits of European capabilities in the 1940s and the early 1950s.

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Authors & Contributors
Bud, Robert
Daemmrich, Arthur Alfred
Shama, Gilbert
Bayer, Ronald
Connolly, Cynthia A.
Golden, Janet Lynne
Journals
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
History and Technology
Asclepio: Archivo Iberoamericano de Historia de la Medicina
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Canadian Historical Review
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Publishers
Oxford University Press
University of Chicago Press
Cornell University
Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra
Potomac Books
University of North Carolina Press
Concepts
Medicine
Penicillin
Medicine and politics
Pharmaceutical industry
Cold War
Antibiotics
People
Franco, Francisco
Waksman, Selman Abraham
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
Places
United States
Germany
Taiwan
New York (U.S.)
Portugal
South Africa
Institutions
American Society for Pharmacology
Universidade de Coimbra
Deutsche Pharmazuetische Gesellschaft
Medical Research Council (Great Britain)
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
Pfizer, Inc.
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