Meds come from varied sources
June 4, 2008 (Wednesday)
Medicines are made of many different kinds of things. I started taking something this week that is made of crabs, shrimp, crawfish and similar critters. Actually I don’t think it’s called a “medicine” as such. It’s a dietary supplement.
Many medicines are plants and herbs. Old-time home remedies were generally made of organic materials grown in the wild or intentionally planted and cultivated.
A great many medicines are produced in the laboratories as chemical compounds or solutions. Even when the finished product is labeled as certain chlorides, etc., many times the original material was plant, mineral or animal substances. Sometimes, then, it is probable that a $150 pill is made of something that your ancestors plucked from a vine or dug from the earth.
I thought it interesting when I got the bottle of stuff home and checked the ingredients that the principle ingredients are the skeletons of creatures in our bays who wear them on the outside. I’ve never been much of a fan of natural remedies, but I could almost say out loud that the first dose helped me. If that’s so, I’m surprised because I was willing to wait six weeks to evaluate whether it might be working.
While taking my new medicine made of crabs and crawfish, I remember that the founder of Bristol-Myers-Squibb was my first cousin, twice removed. My great grandfather, Charles P. Fake, born in Clinton, New York, had a sister, Martha Fake, who married Henry Platt Bristol. The Bristols had a son named William McLaren Bristol, who teamed up with a friend, John Ripley Myers, and in 1887 the two of them sank $5000 into a business in Clinton that sold a medicine, Sal Hepatica, and Ipana toothpaste. Today Bristol-Myers-Squibb is a giant worldwide company. The history can be found here: http://www.bms.com/aboutbms/content/data/ourhis.html