The Modern Pharmaceutical Industry: History, Current Position and Challenges

The development of modern medicine experienced a major leap forward in the nineteenth century because of advances in science and, since then, the evolution of scientific knowledge has pushed forward the growth of the modern pharmaceutical industry (Gribbin and Hook, 2004). The progress in human understanding of bacteriology and related subjects had replaced traditional knowledge of epidemiology and chemistry (Wikipedia, 2007a, “History of medicine”). The hygiene theory advocated by Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) in 1847 paved the way for the germ theory of disease. The germ theory was put into practice later when, in 1865, British surgeon Joseph Lister discovered the principles of antisepsis (ibid.). The discoveries made by Louis Pasteur that pinpointed microorganisms as a major cause of diseases gave birth to a major conceptual breakthrough in the making of therapeutics. Against this background, Pasteur’s invention of a vaccine against rabies in 1880 led to the success of other vaccine development (see Seppa, 18 and 25 December 1999). Pasteur’s experiments, which confirmed germ theory, had important implications for using scientific method in the making of medicine. This method was articulated in Pasteur’s book, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine in 1865. Pasteur and Robert Koch, who discovered tubercle bacillus in 1882, cholera bacillus in 1883, and Koch’s postulates, founded bacteriology (Wikipedia, 2007a).