#356 Pfizer: A Brooklyn Origin Story

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The story of a true Brooklyn 'start up' -- Charles Pfizer and Co, who went from developing intestinal worm medication in 1849 to being a leader of COVID-19 vaccine development and distribution in the 21st century. The origin of Pfizer is one of German immigration in the mid 19th century and of early medical practices and concoctions that might seem alien to us today. But this company's biography is also a celebration of Brooklyn — the City of Brooklyn in the mid 19th century, developing into an economic force in the United States and in opposition to the city of New York across the East River. PLUS You can't tell the Pfizer story without looking at the world of apothecaries and early drug stores in New York City in the 19th century. FEATURING Duane Reade, Keihl's, C.O. Bigelow, E. R. Squibb and Johnson & Johnson ALSO What important American figure today grew up delivering parcels for his family drugstore in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn? boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys!
0:02.0	Hey!
0:03.0	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:06.0	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:16.0	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys.
0:18.0	This is Greg Young with the mini episode this week.
0:21.0	To mark a particular moment in time.
0:25.0	A year since our city went into lockdown
0:28.0	due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
0:31.0	A year of anxiety and mourning for the entire country and for the world.
0:36.0	But a pandemic that hit New York City very severely with over three quarters of a million cases
0:42.0	and over 30,000 deaths since March 2020.
0:47.0	But things we hope are getting better, albeit slowly, and back towards normalcy.
0:54.0	Thanks in part to, well to be blunt, pharmaceutical companies.
0:59.0	Well, really thanks to the scientists, the researchers, vaccine volunteers, physicians, nurses, and technicians
1:07.0	who have developed these new COVID-19 vaccines that are currently being injected into the arms of millions of people each day.
1:15.0	Many of you listening already have one of these vaccines currently coursing through your bloodstream.
1:21.0	Some of them with futuristic jetsons like names Moderna, AstraZeneca, Moderna,
1:30.0	named for the modification mRNA from which their vaccine is based, is a fairly new biotech out of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1:39.0	But two of the biggest producers of COVID-19 vaccines in the world actually trace their origins to 19th century America
1:48.0	and to New York and New Jersey, actually.
1:51.0	The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, that's the one-shotter, was developed by the Belgian Janssen Pharmaceuticals,
	...

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