Several multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies got their starts in Philadelphia as neighborhood drug stores.
Weightman, Powers, and Rosengarten made their money by selling quinine to the US government.
James Smith and Clayton French did not know each and both started as neighborhood druggists; but family and business partners kept their businesses going and their names prominent long after their deaths.
The Wyeth Brothers invented a machine that standardized the size of pills and tablets, and William Warner learned how to sugarcoat them. Warner’s pharmacopeia was distributed internationally and served as the standard reference for doctors and pharmacists for years.
And McNeil Laboratories introduced Tylenol Elixir for Children in 1955, then watched it become one of the best-selling over-the-counter meds of all time.
McNeil is interred at Laurel Hill West, while all the others are at Laurel Hill East. All of them have intriguing stories you will hear in this episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #058 – Laurel Hill and Big Pharma.
BBB#033: Abram Winegardner Harris - A Forgotten Educator
ABC#063: Curtain Up! Four Early Philadelphia Playwrights
BBB#032: Philadelphia's Jazz Lodestar - Dennis Sandole
ABC#062: Three More Philadelphia Magazines - Graham's, Peterson's, and Lippincott's
BBB#031: Gladys Hall & Russell Ball - Glamourizing Early Hollywood
ABC#061: Play Ball!, Part 3 - Four More Baseball Pioneers at Laurel Hill
BBB#030: Grayce Nottage Nicholas - Black Is Beautiful
ABC#060: Three More Women Who Changed Philadelphia
BBB#029: MOVE and Laurel Hill
ABC#059: Three More Black Pioneers
BBB#028: The Philadelphia Orchestra & Laurel Hill West
BONUS: Anna Weightman Penfield and the Fioretta Follies
BBB#027: An Old Soul Guitarist - Jack Rose
ABC#057: Murder Most Foul, Part 1
BBB#026: The Surgeon Is a General - I.S. Ravdin
ABC#056: Philadelphia and Oil
BBB#025: Free Science for All - William Wagner
ABC#055: The Supremes - Justices at Laurel Hill
BBB#024: The Female Bobby Jones - Glenna Collett Vare
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