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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Advance Access originally published online on January 18, 2009
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2009 64(2):135-172; doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrn075
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

A Thing Patented is a Thing Divulged: Francis E. Stewart, George S. Davis, and the Legitimization of Intellectual Property Rights in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, 1879–1911

Joseph M. Gabriel*

Correspondence: * Department of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Medicine, Florida State University, 1115 West Call Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-4300. Email: joseph.gabriel{at}med.fsu.edu


  Abstract

This article examines the efforts of pharmacist and physician Francis E. Stewart to legitimize the commercial introduction of new drugs by reinterpreting the ethical status of patent rights in pharmaceutical manufacturing. I argue that patents had long been understood by the orthodox medical community as an unethical form of medical monopoly and that, as a result, drug companies that marketed their goods primarily to physicians in the years immediately following the Civil War had little room to develop or introduce new products. In collaboration with George S. Davis and the pharmaceutical manufacturing firm Parke, Davis, & Company, Stewart worked to redefine patents as an ethical means of encouraging scientific and commercial innovation. In doing so, he sought to reconcile medical science and commerce so that they were mutually beneficial to one another. However, I also suggest that his efforts had an ironic effect in that they helped legitimatize a form of patent protection that Stewart himself came to believe to be unethical in nature.

Key Words: Francis E. Stewart • George S. Davis • Parke, Davis, & Company • patents • trademarks • intellectual property rights • pharmaceutical industry • therapeutic reform • medical ethics

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number 0349956. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I would like to thank Steven Epstein, Paul Israel, Stephen Pemberton, and the anonymous reviewers for the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences for their comments.


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