From Propaganda to scientific marketing: Schering, cortisone, and the construction of drug markets
Résumé
This paper examines the postwar rise of drug scientific marketing, i.e., the systematic mobilization of the biomedical sciences for promotion purposes as well as the rise of marketing into a form of science, taking the case of the German firm Schering. To analyze the specific articulation between in-house research, marketing practices and drug prescription the article follows the case of Schering?s corticoids: cortisone in the 1950s, its derivatives in the 1960s. The contrasted promotional campaigns Schering organized for both of these products reveals the combined reorganization of promotional and in-house research activities, which took place at Schering after 1945, providing for new and more intimate relationship between science and the construction of markets. It also shows that this was a gradual process of change rather than a radical departure.