Strasbourg Dancing Plague

Epidemics of uncontrollable dancing that took place for days and involved scores if not hundreds of people broke out in northwestern Europe in 1374, in 1483 in western Germany and Strasbourg during summer 1518.

In July 1518, scores of people in Strasbourg took to the streets to dance. There was no festival or special occasion that inspires them to do so; they were inexplicably compelled.

Around 400 people were afflicted with dancing mania and danced constantly for weeks, most of them eventually dying from heart-attack, stroke or exhaustion.

An unknown force drove some to their death, and this feverish plaque suddenly and swiftly, engulfing the town and surrounding areas in terror. Fifteen victims died daily, according to a chronicler of the Strasbourg epidemic.

The Strasbourgeois responded predictably by corralling dancers and seeking to control the usual sources of heavenly anger, including drunkenness, prostitution, gambling, and blaspheming. Lasting several weeks the mania subsidized only after pilgrimage by the stricken to a local shrine to St. Vitus and much contrition for civic sinfulness.

The Dancing Plague of 1518 was not the first of such pandemics to strike Europe in the Middle Ages, but it one of the most notable and well-studied. The term Dancing Mania or ‘Choreomania’ was first used by Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim), the renowned physician, alchemist and astrologer.

He was the first to attribute the mania to medical causes as opposed to the supernatural. He visited Strasbourg seven years after the Dancing Plague took place.
Strasbourg Dancing Plague

Merck KGaA (Germany)

The parent firm of Merck KGaA was founded in Darmstadt over 450 years ago, was forced to split into two parts in 1916.

One part, Merck KGaA, is still controlled by the founding family which continues to serve as the major and largest shareholder. The other part, Merck & Co., is a publicly traded corporation on Wall Street. This US subsidiary was expropriated in 1917 and has been an independent company ever since.

Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company that was founded in 1668. The pharmacy was passed down through generations of the family, and in 1827 Heindrich Emanuel Merck expanded the apothecary to include chemical and research operations.

From these humble beginnings, the pharmaceuticals giant was born, eventually pioneering the manufacture of morphine, cocaine and MDMA (ecstasy). The pharmaceutical division includes generic and prescription products the latter being mainly focused on oncology, cardiology and more recently reproductive health following the acquisition of Serono in 2007.

In 1668 Freidrich Jacob Merck acquired the Angel Pharmacy in Darmstadt. Later in 1827, Heinrich Emmanuel Merci began industrial scale production of alkaloids, plant extracts and other chemical.

Currently, the Company diversifies its activities into four business divisions: Merck Serono; Consumer Health; Merck Millipore, and Performance Materials. Within the Merck Serono division, the Company focuses on therapeutic areas and prescription drugs of chemical and biotechnological origin.
Merck KGaA (Germany)

Dr. von Mering (28 February 1849, in Cologne – 5 January 1908)

Joseph Freiha von Mering was born in Halle an der Saale, Germany. He was well versed in pharmacology, laryngology and internal medicine and learned biochemistry from Hoppe-Seyler.

He studied in Bonn and in Greifswald, a small Prussian university town which had earlier joined the Hanseatic League. He graduated from the University of Strasbourg in 1873.
In 1877, Harmon Northrop Morse synthesized paracetamol at Johns Hopkins University by way of p-nitrophenol with tin in arctic acetic acid.

But it was not until 1887 that clinical pharmacologist Joseph von Mering attempted paracetamol on patients.

In 1893, von Mering issued a document informing on the clinical results of paracetamol with phenacetin, another aniline differential. Von Mering asserted that, unlike phenacetin, paracetamol had a small propensity to produce methemoglobinemia.

Paracetamol was then rejected in favor of phenacetin. It was not until the 1940s that paracetamol was reinvestigated after it was found present in proteins closed with phenacetin.

In 1889 together with Oskar Minkowski, von Mering discovered the direct connection between the pancreas and diabetes which led to the discovery of insulin. They found that the pancreas supplies a hormone essential to glucose metabolism. He reported in 1890 that the surgical removal of the pancreas from a healthy animal would cause diabetes.

Mering joined Naunyn’s Strasbourg Clinic of Internal Medicine, and in 1890 was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine at the outpatient department of Halle, Germany, and in 1900 as full professor of Internal Medicine in Medical Policlinic of Halle.

In 1903, Mering developed the chemicals structure of a drug that might produce sleep. Unable to synthesize the compound himself, he asked the great Emil Fisher at the University of Berlin for help and it was Fisher’s group that created the first of the barbiturates.
Dr. von Mering (28 February 1849, in Cologne – 5 January 1908)

Felix Hoffmann and aspirin

Felix Hoffmann (1868-1946) was the son of a manufacturer in the town of Ludwigsburg in Swabia Germany. He studied chemistry and pharmacy at the University of Munich, graduating in 1893.

Legend has it that Hoffmann was searching for something to relieve his father's arthritis. His father was using salicylic acid a precursor to aspirin, for his condition in the late 19th century.

Hoffmann prepared a range of compounds by making slight modification to the structure of 2-hydroxybenzoic acid.

Dr. Felix Hoffmann

Hoffmann tried out each of the new preparations on his father the effects. Within a two-week period in August 897 Hoffmann synthesized two drugs: aspirin and heroin.

On October 10, 1897, he prepared aspirin in a purer form using an improved process. Hoffman gave some of his aspirin to his father and it worked well in relieving arthritis pain.

Aspirin reduces pain and fever by reducing the production of prostaglandins, inflammatory compounds released when cells are damaged.

The problem was that aspirin is not very soluble in water. It was first available as a powder in sachets.

Bayer then decided to pellet the powder and aspirin became the first medicine to be sold as tablets.
Felix Hoffmann and aspirin