ABSTRACT
The rst pharmaceutical manufacturing in England began with The Society of the Art and Mystery of the Apothecaries of the City of London. In 1623, the society established a cooperative of local apothecaries who agreed to produce galenicals and chemicals on a large scale. The cooperative incorporated in 1628 and by 1703 the society had become the exclusive suppliers of drugs to the English navy and later to the army. Similarly, in 1801 the East India Company entered into an exclusive contract to buy all of their drugs from the society, which lasted until the mid-nineteenth century.7 The success of the society’s pharmaceutical manufacturing venture inspired other nations to form similar cooperative eorts: the Pharmacie Centrale de France in 1852, the Hageda, in Germany in 1902, and city boards of health in the United States during the late nineteenth century.8
