Upjohn

The Upjohn Company
Industry	Pharmaceutical
Founded	1886
Defunct	1995; 30 years ago
Fate	Merged with Pharmacia to form Pharmacia & Upjohn
Successor	Pharmacia & Upjohn; Viatris
Headquarters	Portage MI, U.S.

The Upjohn Company was an American pharmaceutical manufacturing firm (est. 1886) in Hastings, Michigan, by Dr. William E. Upjohn, a 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan medical school. The company was originally formed to make friable pills, specifically designed to crush easily, and thus be easier for patients to digest. Upjohn initially marketed the pills to doctors by sending them a wooden plank along with a rival’s pill and one of Upjohn’s, with instructions to try to hammer the pills into the plank.^[1]

^ Lohrstorfer, Martha; Larson, Catherine (2002). "William E. Upjohn: Person of the Century 1853 - 1932". Kalamazoo Public Library. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved December 24, 2024. Known by his contemporaries as a dreamer and a tinkerer, Dr. Upjohn saw a need to improve the means of administering medicine. Most medicines of the day were in fluid form, and those in pill form were often hard and insoluble. Patients were left to try to digest the bitter medicine, with no guarantee that it would dissolve in their systems effectively. Dr. Upjohn began experimenting with making better pills in the attic of his home. Eventually he invented his "friable" pill. Friable meant that the pill could easily be crushed to a powder. The pill was patented in 1885, and its reputation quickly spread within the medical community, thanks greatly to Dr. Upjohn's marketing strategy. He sent small pine boards to thousands of physicians along with samples of his rival's hard pills, and his own friable pills. He invited doctors to hammer the pills into the boards to see which one would be the most digestible. This tactic was eventually modified, but for the next 60 years, a thumb reducing an Upjohn pill to powder was used as the trademark symbol of his company, the Upjohn Pill and Granule Company, later more widely known to the world as The Upjohn Company.

[1] Lohrstorfer, Martha; Larson, Catherine (2002). "William E. Upjohn: Person of the Century 1853 - 1932". Kalamazoo Public Library. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved December 24, 2024. Known by his contemporaries as a dreamer and a tinkerer, Dr. Upjohn saw a need to improve the means of administering medicine. Most medicines of the day were in fluid form, and those in pill form were often hard and insoluble. Patients were left to try to digest the bitter medicine, with no guarantee that it would dissolve in their systems effectively. Dr. Upjohn began experimenting with making better pills in the attic of his home. Eventually he invented his "friable" pill. Friable meant that the pill could easily be crushed to a powder. The pill was patented in 1885, and its reputation quickly spread within the medical community, thanks greatly to Dr. Upjohn's marketing strategy. He sent small pine boards to thousands of physicians along with samples of his rival's hard pills, and his own friable pills. He invited doctors to hammer the pills into the boards to see which one would be the most digestible. This tactic was eventually modified, but for the next 60 years, a thumb reducing an Upjohn pill to powder was used as the trademark symbol of his company, the Upjohn Pill and Granule Company, later more widely known to the world as The Upjohn Company.

[1]

Upjohn

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · View on Wikipedia