Professional and Industrial Drug Regulation in France and Germany: The Trajectories of Plant Extracts

Abstract

On September 11, 1941, Marshall Pétain’s government of nonoccupied France issued a law reorganizing drug supply in the country. Based on a decade-long discussion on the effects of industrialization on drug production and sales, the reform replaced the previous system — in which new remedies required professional approval from the Académie de Médecine — by establishing an administrative procedure for securing a visa de spécialité pharmaceutique. This “visa” was the political recognition of the “great transformation” that had led industrially made preparations to dominate the markets for therapeutic agents (Chauveau, 2005). The visa was a form of marketing permit. It authorized the introduction of a specialty if, and only if, a committee made up of physicians, pharmacists, representatives of the industry, and health administrators (the Commission Technique des Spécialités) gave its green light. According to the law, this technical committee was to assess the composition, the conditions of production, the novelty, and the absence of toxicity of the product. The new law also included a short clause specifying that the state-granted herbalist certificate would no longer be delivered; as a result, the École d’herboristerie, which had been associated with the Paris Faculty of Pharmacy, would disappear.1 Herbalists would thus no longer have an official status, ending a century-long battle with pharmacists over control of medicinal plants.