Abstract

ESTRADA-ORREGO, Victoria; GARCIA-GARCIA, Victor  and  MARQUEZ-VALDERRAMA, Jorge. The Medical Profession in the Regulation of the Therapeutic Market in Colombia (1895-1948). Hist. Soc. [online]. 2022, n.43, pp.92-116.  Epub Aug 22, 2022. ISSN 0121-8417.  https://doi.org/10.15446/hys.n43.99652.

This article shows the process of regulating the pharmaceutical market in Colombia in the first half of the 20th century. This process took place in a context of tensions between apothecary and university medicine. The field of medicine was in the process of professionalization, it sought to subordinate health-related trades, including pharmacies, and defined the rules of the therapeutic market. In the midst of a flourishing market and an incipient pharmaceutical industry, pharmacists were the first to organize as a trade union and to think about the professionalization of their trade. The article follows three analytical axes: the standardization of the pharmacy by university medicine; the regulation of the pharmaceutical market as one of the fronts of public hygiene, and the struggle of certified doctors against medicines of doubtful efficacy. The analysis shows that the regulation of medicines is part of a broader impulse of medicalization of society. Arguments in defense of public health played a key role in the regulation of medicines and in the formation of a monopoly of the medical arts dominated by university medicine and supported by the State.

Keywords : pharmacy; medicine; therapeutic market; pharmaceutical industry; higher level education; Colombia.

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