The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain: Health, Wealth and Authority

246 Pages·2018·2.803 MB·English

by  María Jesús Santesmases (auth.)

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THE CIRCULATION
OF PENICILLIN IN SPAIN
HEALTH, WEALTH AND AUTHORITY
MARÍA JESÚS SANTESMASES
Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
in Modern History
Series Editors
Carsten Timmermann
University of Manchester
Manchester, United Kingdom
Michael Worboys
University of Manchester
Manchester, United Kingdom
The aim of this series is to illuminate the development and impact of
medicine and the biomedical sciences in the modern era. The series was
founded by the late Professor John Pickstone, and its ambitions reflect
his commitment to the integrated study of medicine, science and tech-
nology in their contexts. He repeatedly commented that it was a pity
that the foundation discipline of the field, for which he popularized the
acronym ‘HSTM’ (History of Science, Technology and Medicine) had
been the history of science rather than the history of medicine. His point
was that historians of science had too often focused just on scientific
ideas and institutions, while historians of medicine always had to con-
sider the understanding, management and meanings of diseases in their
socio-economic, cultural, technological and political contexts. In the
event, most of the books in the series dealt with medicine and the bio-
medical sciences, and the changed series title reflects this. However, as
the new editors we share Professor Pickstone’s enthusiasm for the inte-
grated study of medicine, science and technology, encouraging studies
on biomedical science, translational medicine, clinical practice, disease
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The books in this series will present medicine and biomedical science as
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cine and biomedical sciences in modern history.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15183
María Jesús Santesmases
The Circulation
of Penicillin in Spain
Health, Wealth and Authority
María Jesús Santesmases
Instituto de Filosofía
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas
Madrid, Spain
Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History
ISBN 978-3-319-69717-8 ISBN 978-3-319-69718-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69718-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959319
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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A
cknowledgements
A considerable debt of gratitude is accumulated when conduct-
ing a lengthy research project. My interest in the history of penicil-
lin began many years ago, when I discovered a file at the Rockefeller
Archive Centre on the Spanish Professor of Physiology at the University
of Madrid Medical School, Antonio Gallego. This material, and advice
from Margarita Salas, led me to his son, Roberto Gallego; our discus-
sions provided me with insightful observations of the early days of peni-
cillin in Spain through the history of Compañía Española de Penicilinas y
Antibióticos (CEPA). For my reconstruction of this company’s history
I received generous help from Santiago López and Antonio Gómez de
Mendoza. I learnt about Banco Urquijo and its enterprises at seminars
on the history of industry led by Gómez de Mendoza at the Fundación
Zubiri in Madrid, though I certainly did not have the opportunity to
learn all the group could have taught me about industry during Franco’s
regime. Francisco Comín provided early publishing support, accepting a
working paper to be distributed by Fundación Empresa Pública. Later,
Viviane Quirke organised an inspiring meeting in Oxford on twentieth-
century pharmaceuticals, at which I presented a first attempt to recon-
struct the history of the firm in an international perspective. Following her
useful advice I was able to contribute a chapter dealing with the origins
of this work to a book edited by Viviane and Judy Slinn. Being a mem-
ber of the European research programme DRUGS between 2008 and
2013, awarded by the European Science Foundation (06-RNP-045)
and funded by national funding agencies, enabled me to keep in close
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
contact with colleagues tackling similar research issues through that
period. As part of this programme, Miguel García-Sancho, Ana Romero
de Pablos, Christoph Gradmann and I organised an international work-
shop on the history of antibiotics in Madrid; a special issue of Dynamis
including many of the contributions was then produced, edited by
Christoph and myself. Teresa Ortiz, Agata Ignaciuk, and I organised a
DRUGS meeting on Gendered Drugs in Granada, at which I presented
my first study on women in the history of antibiotics, and together with
Teresa edited a volume on the subject published by Ashgate, through
which I was able to study and develop a gender perspective. At a meeting
in Berlin organised by Mathias Grote and Lara Keuck I presented a paper
on the history of the bacterial cell wall, a reconstruction of the experimen-
tal research carried out on the effects of antibiotics on bacteria, part of
which is also included here.
At various archives I received kind and invaluable assistance from
many librarians and archivists, including at the Archivo General de la
Administración, in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid); Archivo del Ministerio
de Hacienda (Madrid); the Rockefeller Archive Center in North
Tarrytown (New York); The British Library Additional Manuscripts sec-
tion (London); the Fondos Banco Urquijo, at the library of Instituto
Juan March de Investigaciones Sociales (Madrid), later moved to the
Instituto Carlos III-Juan March, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid;
and the Hemeroteca Nacional at the Biblioteca Nacional de España
(Madrid). Without the continued support of librarians at the Biblioteca
Tomás Navarro Tomás, CSIC (Madrid), this book would not have been
possible.
Previous versions of this book’s contents, that I have since rear-
ranged, reworked and developed, have been published in Antibióticos en
la Autarquía (Madrid: Fundación Empresa Pública, 1999); ‘Distributing
penicillin: the clinic, the hero and industrial production in Spain, 1943–
1952’, in Perspectives on Twentieth-Century Pharmaceuticals, ed. Viviane
Quirke and Judy Slinn (Oxford-Berna: Peter Lang, 2010), 91–118;
‘Screening antibiotics: industrial research in CEPA and Merck in the
1950s’, Dynamis 31 (2011): 407–27; ‘Gender in research and industry:
women in antibiotic factories in 1950s Spain’, in Gendered Drugs and
Medicine: Historical and Socio-cultural Perspectives, ed. T. Ortiz-Gómez
and M. J. Santesmases (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 61–84; ‘The long
postwar and the politics of penicillin: early circulation and smuggling in
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
Spain, 1944–1954’, Medicina nei Secoli 26 (2014): 615–38; and ‘The
bacterial cell wall in the antibiotic era: an ontology in transit between
morphology and metabolism, 1940s–1960s’, Journal of the History of
Biology 49 (2016): 3–36. I was also able to participate in a collective
reflection about the history of antibiotic resistance, for which my thanks
go to Scott Podolsky and Anne Kveim Lie.
Throughout the process of elaborating my ideas on including addi-
tional agents to the somewhat circumscribed history of antibiotic discov-
ery and early antimicrobial practices, I am indebted to many colleagues
and friends whose insights, discussions and comments about their own
research and mine helped me develop my story and refocus my inter-
ests. Esteban Rodríguez Ocaña carefully and patiently read most of the
chapters, providing insightful comments and criticisms, and along with
Ramón Castejón, shared unpublished material with me on penicillin
and venereal diseases in Spain. I have been able to explore the gender
approach with my inspiring colleague and friend, Teresa Ortiz, and ben-
efitted from discussions with Ana Romero de Pablos and Agata Ignaciuk.
Mauro Capocci told me that Fleming’s diary of his trip to Spain in 1948
was included in The Alexander Fleming Papers at the British Library.
Many others provided additional material, testimonies and suggestions:
I am particularly grateful to Jon Arrizabalaga, Ana Barahona, Robert
Bud, Ramón Castejón, Mar Cebrián, Francisco Comín, Angela Creager,
Flurin Condrau, Rosa García Ballester, Pedro García Barreno, Antonio
Gómez Mendoza, Christoph Gradmann, Santiago López, Ilana Löwy,
Jorge Martínez Reverte, Emilio Muñoz, Maribel Porras, Toine Pieters,
Vivianne Quirke, Maria Rentetzi, Edna Suárez, and Ulrike Thoms.
I am also indebted to the generous information provided in the many
interviews that Roberto Gallego, Isabel Martín, Sagrario Mochales, as
well as Fernando Peláez and Carlos Rosas, granted me on CEPA’s his-
tory. As witnesses and major characters in this story, their recollections
have been highly instrumental in my reconstruction. Encouraging sup-
port from Michael Worboys and Carsten Timmermann enabled me to
transform my initial project draft into this book. An anonymous referee
made insightful comments and suggestions that helped me enhance both
my arguments and the originality of my narrative. I am especially grateful
to the expert and committed help provided by Joanna Baines in copy-
editing my English; her skills prompted me to elaborate some of my
arguments further.
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research for this book received funding from the Comunidad
de Madrid (Madrid regional Government) and the Spanish ministry of
Economy and Innovation (FFI2012-34076 and FFI2016-76364).
Antonio Calvo Roy provided the daily support my long research
endeavour required. Our children, Atocha, Manuel and Carmen, have
grown up alongside this venture and provided comments and sugges-
tions, helping keep the project in perspective.
Although this text has benefitted enormously from all those who
participated in the construction of my approach—the historiography
included—and in its expression, I am solely responsible for any mistakes
in, or omissions from, the text that follows.
Madrid
July 2017
c
ontents
1 Introduction: The West, Spain and the Early Circulation
of Penicillin 1
2 Fleming in Spain: The Hero, the Icon and the Politics
of Public Acclaim 23
3 Manufacturing Penicillin: Industrial Policy, Gender
and the Antibiotic Factory 49
4 Smuggling: The Management of Scarcity and Trade
of Penicillin as a Post-War Commodity 83
5 Modern Times: Screening Antibiotics and the
Factory Line 107
6 A Promising Drug: Bacteria, Antibiotics and Marketing
in an Era of Economic Development 133
7 Beyond Healing: Antibiotic Resistance and Regulatory
Regimes as Agents in the Spanish Transition to
Democracy 163
ix