Ciba Pharmaceuticals and Mid-Century Marketing

120913ciba1 — A Ciba Symposia pamphlet on Greco-Egyptian Alchemy from 1941.

I know nothing about Ciba Pharmaceutical Products and had never heard of the company until I found this pamphlet in a box of old books.

Apparently, Ciba Pharmaceuticals produced pamphlets on various topics related to pharmaceuticals and chemistry. This one contains a number of articles by William Jerome Wilson, who contributed to a number of Ciba Symposia on alchemy—one on Chinese alchemy in 1940 and one on the mystical developments in alchemy in 1942.

120913ciba2 — The Ciba Symposia was clearly a vehicle for marketing Ciba pharmaceuticals. Here’s a large ad for Coramine.

These pamphlets were clearly a vehicle for marketing Ciba’s pharmaceutical products. This pamphlet includes three large ads for different medicines: the stimulant Coramine, the steroids Metandren and Perandren, and the antispasmodic Trasentin.

120913ciba3 — Ciba’s two steroids, Perandren and Metandren.

I can’t help but appreciate the detail and care of the ads in this pamphlet. Everything from the typography to the stylized images conveys both authority, efficacy, and modernity. I am, therefore, intrigued by Ciba’s use of alchemy here as a means of marketing its pharmaceuticals. This wasn’t the first or the last time a Ciba Symposia focused on alchemy. What made alchemy useful in this context?

Anybody interested in pursuing these questions should start at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Not only do they appear to have a number of other Ciba pamphlets, as this search indicates, they have other Ciba materials and, no doubt, boxes and boxes of other mid-century pharmaceutical literature.