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ANTONIO GONZÁLEZ BUENO Y RAÚL RODRÍGUEZ NOZAL AN. R. ACAD. NAC. FARM.

cy. The bottling and filling process of the medicinal liquid in the glass
vial constitutes the most characteristic and definitive stage in the man-
ufacture of injections, at least from the pharmaceutical point of view.
We are faced with an operation, or group of operations, which are to-
tally innovative for pharmaceutical procedure. We believe that the im-
plantation and evolution of the different systems of filling marked a
point in the progress of this pharmaceutical form, going from totally
artisan practices to industrial procedures (30, 31).

4. CONCLUSION

The therapeutic revolution of the 19th century was not lived in the
same way in all countries; the economic social and cultural tradition,
was key for interpreting the conceptual change that the discovery of
natural active principles and the preparation of new synthetic reme-
dies from bituminosus coal, supposed. The Central European coun-
tries were very involved in the mechanisms and in the philosophy of
the industrial revolution. Soon they were to control the fabrication of
new drugs. The industry of alkaloids and that linked to organic syn-
thesis of pharmacologically active molecules was very soon dominat-
ed by the countries of this area, especially by Germany, although oth-
er nations also played a part, namely Switzerland and England.

Although it is certain that with the synthesis of alkaloids, the
launching of industrialised medication took off, the definitive backup
was produced with the development of organic chemistry of pharma-
ceutical application. In the first case, the research protagonist is ob-
viously therapeutic: the extraction of active principles is no more than
an optimisation of classic medicinal material. In the second case, the
drug is only a secondary product obtained or attainable from the pro-
cedures used in any chemical industry.

The ‘innovative’ scheme for drugs, generalised in Central European
countries, follows general industrialisation guidelines; specific facto-
ries do not exist for their attainment but they are integrated into much
more viable commercial and technological units such as those respon-
sible for the elaboration of artificial dyestuffs. The chemical industry
functions as a whole; each raw material used in a specific process may
not be more than the product or waste of another. In these conditions,

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