EUMENOL—Merck’s Patent Emmenagogue and its Chinese Connections (1896–1961)

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the rise and fall of Eumenol, Merck's patent emmenagogue extracted from danggui (當歸), and its destined connections with China. Understood to affect the blood, danggui, one of the most prolifically used substance among Chinese materia medica, had been included in recipes for women aged from before menarche to after menopause since the twelfth century, but it was not until its production and advertisement by the German pharmaceutical company that the multi-functional material was placed on the international stage with a sharpened gendered image. For Merck customers around the world, Eumenol was a long-awaited, harmless emmenagogue made from an obscure Chinese material; for Chinese who had been using the root to treat a wide range of disorders, the branded drug was a scientific refinement of a time-honored medicine. The success of Eumenol gave advocates of Chinese medicine a concrete example with which to rejuvenate their medical traditions, but the later cessation of Chinese imports forced Merck to eventually stop marketing the emmenagogue. Within this intersection of medicinal exchanges, Eumenol emerged as an indispensable piece of the puzzle in terms of both the history of an ancient remedy and the modernization of Chinese medicine.Keywords: EumenoldangguiMerckwomen’s medicineChina AcknowledgementsThe authors are indebted to Chen Ming, Bettina Wahrig, Dominik Merdes, Albert Wu, Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang and Che-chia Chang for directing us to important primary and secondary sources for this research. We thank Sabine Bernschneider-Reif and the staff of the Merck Archives for their generous support. We are also grateful to Sean HL Lei, Michael Stanley-Baker and Wen-hua Kuo for their excellent comments when we presented earlier versions of this article in different venues. This article comes out of the Taiwan-Germany (DE) International Collaborate Project—Materialities in Medical Cultures in/between Europe and East Asia; we thank MOST (now NSTC) for its funding, and we enjoy constant stimulating conversations with our project members. We value the suggestions from the two anonymous reviewers; any errors and mistakes are of course ours alone.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 A physician experimenting on patients with novel drugs, whether at the request of a pharmaceutical company or not, and such procedures at the turn of the twentieth century should not be confused with the standardized clinical trials used in pharmaceutical research since the 1950s. For the changing methods, protocols, and significance of medical experiments in the twentieth century, see Marks (Citation1997).2 According to Dr. Rahn’s report on 1899/1900, sales “increased tremendously” to 4,145.50 marks in 1900, but there is no record of the sales figures for Eumenol in the previous year.3 The way women used Eumenol as pregnancy test reminds us of what physicians and women in late imperial China would have done to treat amenorrhea. See Bray (Citation1997: 320–321). Francesca Bray provides three examples, namely xionggui syrup, Buddha’s hand powder, and xiaoyao powder, which physicians would prescribe to women or which women would buy and use for themselves if their menstruation had stopped for a few months. The preparations would produce a menstrual flow if the woman was not pregnant; if nothing happened, or if there was a movement in the abdomen, the chances were that she was pregnant. But most importantly for our analysis here, the leading active ingredient in all three recipes was danggui.4 Before Hirth’s introduction, D. Hanbury (1825–1875), a British botanist, did expound that danggui, together with chuanxiong, was given to women before childbirth to diminish the potential for complications when in labor, while F. P. Smith (1833–1888), a missionary in China, also listed menstrual and puerperal disorders among a variety of diseases that danggui was used to treat in Chinese medicine. But neither mentioned the root’s effect on the blood nor proposed any applications for Western medicine. See Hanbury (Citation1876: 260–261) and Smith (Citation1871: 20, 133).5 For instance, among the 15,302 marks from sales in 1912, domestic sales only totaled 4,143 marks (Jahresbericht Citation1912: 20–21, 32, 158). The 1922 report shows that only 635 kg were sold in Germany, while a total of 269 kg was sold in Czechoslovakia alone (Jahresbericht Citation1922: 13, 62).6 The exhibition was the first annual show following the Nazis’ rise to power and was perceived as unprecedented by contemporaries. See, for example, “Deutsches Volk – Deutsche Arbeit. Spiegelbild der nationalsozialistischen Revolution – Verkörperung des Wesens und Wollen des neuen Staates” in the Nazi Party newspaper Der Führer, 22 April 1934 (Deutsches Volk Citation1934: 3).7 On the front and back pages of the booklet, Schmidt & Co. gave three offices in Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin, while another agent, Bornemann & Co., provided an address in Hong Kong.8 Ding Mingquan, together with other physicians, revived the earlier Zhongxi yixue bao (中西醫學報, International Medical Journal) to create the Deu Hua Medizinische Monatsschrift (德華醫學雜誌 1928–1929), with Merck appearing as the only name on the first page of the new journal.9 Unlike the case with the Merck Archives, Foci does not have accessible archival materials for research and, therefore, we can only base our discussions of the Chinese company on public material such as journal articles and newspaper ads.10 Ads for another danggui extract named Gimenor appeared in 1932, just a few months after Foci launched its product; the earliest available ads for Tancnol, by the pharmaceutical company Xinya, began in 1933, and comparable products such as Omensal/Eumenal, Dangguijing, and Dangguimu materialized in Shenbao and other newspapers. See Jinshiliao zhoubao, 17 September 1932; Shenbao, 25 September 1933; 11 April 1940; 19 January 1942; 11 April 1944; Xinwenbao, 20 November 1934. For further research on China’s reaction in the context of national medicine and follow-up government-sponsored studies on danggui after Foci’s first move, see Lee (Citation2023).11 For the impact of WWII on Merck’s production, sale, and business identity, see Burhop et al. (Citation201Citation8, 293–349). For Merck’s post-WWII reconstruction and expansion, see Burhop et al. (Citation201Citation8, 353–406).12 Bernhard Krönig, Otto Pankow, and Rudolf Theodor von Jaschke took turns to work on the revisions of the series after Runge passed away in 1909, but the publisher kept Runge’s name in the title. Eumenol was listed in the revisions published in 1915, 1921, and 1923, but was dropped for the 1933 edition (see below).13 Research shows that the Act was first issued to ensure the exportation of German medicinal products to countries of the newly established European Economic Community, and that the thalidomide scandal at the end of that year helped direct and substantiate future revisions of the Act.Additional informationNotes on contributorsJen-der LeeJen-der Lee is a Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. She examines legal and medical history from a gender perspective and teaches at several universities. Most of her work focuses on early imperial China, but she has recently extended her interest to women's encounters with law and medicine in modern China and Taiwan. Her publications include two books, four edited volumes and many articles. Most of her work can be viewed here: https://www1.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/en/Fellows/Jen-der_LeeChih-hung ChenChih-hung Chen is an assistant professor at the Department of History, National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan. His research fields include modern German history, Western historiography, and the history of classical reception. He has published works about the image of Ancient Greece by German historians such as Johann Gustav Droysen and Jacob Burckhardt. His current research project focuses on the historical theory of the German historian Ludwig Riess, who played a pivotal role in the modernization of the historical study of Japan.