Dr. William Upjohn and the Invention of the Friable Pill

Blogger: Amber Lemus

Dr. William Upjohn cir 1875
Photo By Mbcorcoran -
 Donald Reid Parfet,
Upjohn Company Collection.
 CC BY-SA 4.0

Today we are celebrating the life of a lesser-known inventor who advanced the way medicine was administered to patients. The friable pill is an invention that we take for granted in our modern day, but without this advancement in science, taking our daily supplements and medicines would be much more difficult.

William Upjohn was born on June 15, 1853, to Dr. Uriah Upjohn and his wife Maria. They lived in a town called Kalamazoo Michigan. William's father was a pioneer of the area and served as a physician to the local population for fifty-two years.

William was one of twelve children total, and one of the four who followed in their father's footsteps and become physicians. He graduated from the University of Michigan medical school in 1875, at the age of twenty-two.

On Christmas Eve of 1878, William married Rachel Phoebe Babcock. Together, they had five children, but only four of them would reach adulthood.

For ten years, "Doctor Will", as he was known, practiced medicine in Hastings, Michigan. During this time, he noticed a need for improvement in the way medicines were administered to patients. At the time, medicine was administered in powders and drops, or if they were in pill form, the pills were hard and not easily digestible, leaving the patient to choke down the bitter medicine and hope it absorbed into their system. William started tinkering in his attic with different ways to form pills. Eventually, he invented what he referred to as a "friable" pill, meaning that the pill could be easily crushed into powder, and easily dissolved in the stomach.

William received a patent on the friable pill in 1885. Once he had that patent, he worked on designing a machine that could manufacture these pills more easily. In 1886, he formed the Upjohn Pharmeceutical Company and began manufacturing those pills.

Upjohn Company Logo

Public Domain

Donald Reid Parfet, Upjohn Company Collection.

To market his new product, William employed a unique tactic. He sent small pine boards, along with a sample of his pill, versus his competitor's pill, and invited the physicians to hammer the pills into the board to see which ones were more easily digestible. This apparently worked, because his reputation spread rapidly and the pills became widely accepted. This tactic was later modified, but a thumb crushing the pill became the symbol of the Upjohn Pharmeceutical company for many years.

Besides his growing company, William and his family were beloved citizens of Kalamazoo. Their prominence only grew as the years went on. He established a commission-manager form of government for the city and was elected as the city's first mayor. The commission quickly wiped out a large sum of debts that the city had encumbered. William and the Upjohn Company were behind many philanthropic deeds in the city, including putting up the money to start the Kalamazoo Community Foundation.

On July 4, 1905, William's wife passed away after twenty-seven years of marriage. He waited eight years and a day before marrying again, this time to his neighbor, and a widow of another prominent family of Kalamazoo who owned the largest department store in the city. Apparently, he was fond of Christmas weddings, as this one was held on Christmas day, 1913. By then, his youngest child had reached adulthood, and he himself was sixty years of age.

When William died on October 18, 1932, the community of Kalamazoo grieved him. He'd become known as "Kalamazoo's First Citizen" and the flags were flown at half-mast in his honor, and all of the businesses and schools closed for the hour of his funeral.

The Upjohn Company remained in existence until 1995 when it merged with Pharmacia AB to form Pharmacia & Upjohn. The company was later bought out by Pfizer, however they recently resurrected the Upjohn name for a division that manufactures and licenses drugs for which patents have expired.

Though Doctor Will is a lesser-known inventor, I for one am very grateful for his contributions to medicine.

*****

Two-time winner of the Christian Indie Award for historical fiction, Amber Lemus inspires hearts through enthralling tales She has a passion for travel, history, books and her Savior. This combination results in what her readers call "historical fiction at its finest".

She lives near the Ozarks in her "casita" with her prince charming. Between enjoying life as a boy mom, and spinning stories out of soap bubbles, Amber loves to connect with readers and hang out on Goodreads with other bookish peoples.

Amber is a proud member of the American Christian Fiction Writers Association. Visit her online at http://www.amberlemus.com/ and download a FREE story by subscribing to her Newsletter!

Early Treatment of Pneumonia and Bronchitis

by Denise Weimer

These days, we’re hearing a lot about pneumonia that develops from COVID. A good bit of my writing is set in the first two decades of the 1800s, and several of my characters face sickness of this sort. Before antibiotics and the ability to give oxygen, and even the invention of the stethoscope in 1816, what treatments were offered? Below is a primer of terms and treatments for lung sickness in the Colonial and Federal periods.

Early stethoscopes

Bronchitis was popularly called “a cold on the chest.” In 1814, a British physician became the first to use the term to denote inflammatory changes in the mucous membrane. Treatment included a hot foot bath, hot toddy or lemonade with ten grains of Dover’s powder (ipecac, powdered opium, and potassium sulfate, which often produced sweating to defeat a cold or fever) applied before tightness of the chest set in. If there was pain and soreness in the chest, a light mustard plaster could be applied over the breastbone. The cough could be loosened by a half teaspoon of the compound syrup of squills every two hours. As soon as expectoration became easier, patients could take a quarter teaspoon syrup of ipecac every hour, or, if the cough was violent, two drachm nitrate of potash, two ounces syrup of squills, half a drachm tincture of digitalis, sugar, two drachms gum Arabic in water, to make six ounces with a teaspoon in a wineglass full of water, sipped every ten or fifteen minutes. Whew! What a recipe.

Acute bronchitis could turn chronic with the persistent cough and expectoration remaining. This rarely involved pain but at most an uneasy sensation under the breastbone. The general health was not affected as long as the disease remained in the bronchial mucous membrane. A change of climate was often advocated to someplace warm and dry. Warm clothing such as wool, flannel, or silk garments next to the skin covered in buckskin was suggested. Cough remedies might include a mixture of croton and olive oil or tincture of iodine applied to the chest to loosen mucus. Several complicated receipts could be consulted for dry cough.

Chronic bronchitis occurred most often in smokers or heavy drinkers and could lead to pneumonia if the bronchitis was bacterial. Treatment c. 1808 included garlic, pepper, cinnamon, turpentine, coffee, ipecac, and potassium nitrate. Chronic bronchitis could also worsen to consumption, called “lung sickness.”

Pneumonia was an inflammation of the lung itself and was termed “lung fever.” It often started with a pronounced chill and a sharp pain on one side, then an intense fever and breathing that became hurried and painful. If the entire lung was affected, the patient might present blue skin and high fever. Linseed poultice could be applied, bound tight and covered with oiled silk. Opium and Dover’s powder might have been prescribed for pain and cough. Diet called for milk, broth, eggs, and alcohol.

Pleurisy was an inflammation of the membrane covering the lung and presented with pain in the chest with each breath and inflammation of the membrane covering inside of the thorax with fever, pain, and cough.

Native American remedies for bronchitis included a tea of boiled pleurisy root. Coughs might have been treated by inner bark of wild cherry, white pine, spicebush, or redbud, butterfly weed root, or bloodroot decoction. The pine bark or an infusion of crushed needles combined with the inner bark and young shoots was often applied to the chest on a hot cloth.

These bronchial illnesses are scary enough today. I can’t imagine the fear involved in facing them two hundred years ago. Wishing you health and safety in 2021.

Releasing April 13

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of almost a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses!

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The Durham Doctors

The depot (left) and old brick stores (right) recall bygone days.

by Denise Weimer

The sleepy community of Maxeys, Georgia—in Oglethorpe County outside the university town of Athens—barely remembers its heyday. First known as Shanty, then Salmonsville, the town grew along the Athens Branch of the Georgia Rail Road Company in the 1840s. In October 1844, Dr. Milledge Spencer Durham, a young cotton planter from nearby Clarke County, was appointed postmaster. He became the first of the famed Durham doctors to practice medicine in Maxeys, in the house and apothecary shop my parents bought and restored.

Spence Durham had been trained by his father’s first cousin, Dr. Lindsey Durham of Scull Shoals, a mill village in neighboring Oconee County. Lindsey combined Creek Indian and African American plant lore and herbal studies in William Bartram’s Botanical Gardens into his traditional medical training from Philadelphia. His successful sanatorium on Rose Creek drew patients from across the Southeast.

The Durham House

Records and professional architectural assessment suggest Spence Durham built the initial part of the Durham house and apothecary in the 1840s before returning to Watkinsville in Oconee County by 1860. An avowed Unionist, Dr. Spence nevertheless served as Confederate postmaster there during the Civil War. He may have kept an irregular medical practice in Maxeys until his distant cousin, Dr. William Meigs Durham, took over.

The Durham Apothecary

Dr. William Meigs Durham, grandson of Lindsey Durham, served in Company K of the 42nd Georgia during the Civil War. During the Tennessee Campaign, he threw a bomb back into the Federal trenches, saving the lives of his companions. He was said to have been greatly altered by the war, after which he studied at Georgia Eclectic Medical College in Atlanta and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He practiced medicine in Maxeys for eight years. In 1875, he fled from a tornado to a brick store with his wife and baby daughter. Possibly as a result of the storm damage, he enlarged and enhanced both his house and the free-standing apothecary building in the Victorian style during the 1870s.

For a time, William’s brother, John Lindsey Durham, joined him in practice at Maxeys, before becoming the leading doctor in Woodville.

Dr. William Durham sold the house to a local merchant but passed ownership of the apothecary to his cousin, Dr. Samuel Durham. Sam and his brother, Dr. William Orlando Durham (who moved to Maxeys in the 1890s), lived in the back room until William Orlando married into the merchant’s family, regaining residence at the house. “Dr. Sam,” with his five-foot-long beard, was loved as “the best of the Durham doctors.” A known bachelor, Dr. Sam raised ten children between 1886 and 1904 with his mixed-ancestry housekeeper, Sarah Fambrough Mason. He sent at least three of his children to be educated at the exclusive African American Jeruel Academy in Athens, and he managed to leave his considerable estate to the two daughters who remained with him in Maxeys.

For more info, see The People of Durham Place, 1844-1979, compiled by Nancy Bunker Bowen and https://deniseweimerbooks.webs.com/apothecary. The Durham property is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the apothecary is open to the public as "Coffee, Tea & History."

Medical displays behind compounding desk.

The lives and times of these doctors and the restoration my parents conducted of their house and apothecary shop inspired my Restoration Trilogy—modern romantic suspense where back stories from three different centuries are uncovered during a renovation. A preservation grad stumbles into a town with a complex and potentially dangerous history—as she works for a brooding bachelor who might harbor as many secrets as the town!

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s an editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of The Georgia Gold Series, The Restoration Trilogy, and a number of novellas, including Across Three Autumns of Barbour’s Colonial Backcountry Brides Collection. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses! Connect with Denise here:
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