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.
ABC#054 Hey! I Know That Song! - Composers and Interpreters
BBB#023: Philadelphia’s First Gentleman - Henry Plumer McIlhenny
ABC#053: Suited to a Tee - Golf Course Pioneers
BBB #022: Shop Until Thou Droppest - Strawbridge & Clothier: The Early Years
ABC#052: Reach for the Sky - Astronomers of Laurel Hill
BBB#021: Blood on the Tracks at Mile 59 - Duffy’s Cut
ABC#051: ”Killed by Indians” - Four Philadelphians Who Died in Battles with Indigenous People
BBB#020: Helping Standardize the World - Charles Benjamin Dudley and ASTM
ABC #050: A Couple of Haunted Houses - Baleroy & Grey Towers Castle
BBB#019: A Forgotten Photography Pioneer - John Carbutt
ABC #049: White Collar Crime - J. Edward Addicks, Samuel Ashbridge, and Joseph Miller Huston
BBB #018: Courage for the Deed, Grace for the Doing - The Shipley Sisters and Educating Girls
ABC #048: Shattering Some Glass Ceilings - Nellie Neilson, PhD; Sara Yorke Stevenson, DSci; Elizabeth Head Fetter, aka Hannah Lees
BBB #017: Swimming While Black - Raphael & Julia Coel
ABC #047: Three More Black Trailblazers - Dr. James Betts, Barbara Blackshear, ”Jocko” Henderson
BBB #016: A Cult of One’s Own - J. Elimar Mira Mitta
ABC #046: Fathers of American Medicine, Part 3 - Some Ethical Dilemmas
BBB #015: Pulling Out All the Stops - The Laurel Hill Organ Episode
ABC #045 Stogies, Coffin Nails, and Spittoons: Laurel Hill Tobacconists
BBB #014: Physician, Author, Philanthropist - Bushrod Washington James
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