FAMOUS PHARMACISTS
then decided to sell it as a fountain drink rather than a medicine. It was Pemberton’s bookkeeper and partner, Frank Mason Robinson, who is credited with giving the syrup formula the name Coca-Cola - where Coca came from the coca leaves used and Cola for the kola nuts. Robinson was also responsible for writing the Coca-Cola name in Spencerian script which was popular with bookkeepers of the era and remains one of the most recognised trademarks in the world.
In May 1886, Pemberton introduced the formula at the Jacobs Pharmacy in Atlanta. In its first year, it sold 25 US gallons, with sales increasing in the second year to 1,049 US gallons.
Initial marketing for the drink highlighted the syrup beverage’s ‘medicinal properties’, which, it claimed, could cure headaches.
PHARMACISTS HAVE HAD A DRAMATIC IMPACT ON THE WORLD, WITH MANY HISTORIC FIGURES FROM THE INDUSTRY GIVING US SOME OF OUR EVERYDAY OBJECTS. STEPHANIE BELL TAKES A LOOK AT A PHARMACIST, WHO GAVE THE WORLD COCA COLA, BUT WHO DIED IN POVERTY.
THE PHARMACIST WHO INVENTED ‘THE REAL THING’
Amazingly, it was while trying to find a cure for addiction that a pharmacist created the world’s most famous fizzy drink - Coca-Cola.
The credit for bringing us the fizzy pop goes to 19th century pharmacist, John Pemberton, who first marketed it as an alcoholic drink and a cure for people with a nervous disposition.
Pemberton, an American pharmacist born in 1831, was injured in the chest with a sabre while fighting in the Battle of Columbus during the American civil war. He subsequently became addicted to morphine to ease his pain and, drawing on his pharmacy training, decided to try and seek a
38 - SCOTTISH PHARMACIST cure for his addiction.
In 1866, he began to experiment with painkillers to try and find an opium- free alternative to morphine. His first recipe was ‘Dr. Tuggle’s Compound Syrup of Globe Flower’, in which the active ingredient was derived from the buttonbush, cephalanthus occidentalis: a toxic plant common in Alaska.
He next began experimenting with coca and coca wines, eventually creating a recipe which contained extracts of kola nut and damiana, which he called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca.
According to Coca-Cola historian, Phil
Mooney, Pemberton’s world-famous soda was ‘created in Columbus, Georgia and carried to Atlanta’.
At the time there was great public concern about drug addiction, depression and alcoholism among war veterans as well as ‘highly strung southern women’ and Pemberton’s medicine was advertised as particularly beneficial for ‘ladies, and all those whose sedentary employment causes nervous prostration’.
In 1886, however, when new temperance legislation was introduced in Atlanta, Pemberton was forced to produce a non-alcoholic alternative to his French Wine Coca.
He relied on Atlanta drugstore owner- proprietor Willis E Venable to both test and help him perfect the recipe for the beverage, which he formulated through trial and error.
With Venable’s assistance, Pemberton worked out a set of directions for its preparation that eventually included blending the base syrup with carbonated water by accident. He
Soon after Coca-Cola hit the market, however, Pemberton fell ill and was almost bankrupt. Sick and desperate, he began selling rights to his formula to his business partners in Atlanta.•
He still had, however, a hunch that his formula would some day be ‘a national drink’, and so he attempted to retain a share of the ownership to leave to his son. His son, however, wanted the money, and so, in 1888, they sold the remaining portion of the patent to Asa Candler, another Atlanta pharmacist and businessman, for a total investment of $2,300.
Pemberton died in August of the same year from stomach cancer.
His body was returned to Columbus, Georgia, where he was buried at Linwood cemetery.
Coca-Cola was granted a charter in 1892 and became the Coca-Cola Company, with a starting capital of $100,000.
In 2010, the Coca-Cola Company paid tribute to Pemberton as a key character in an advertising campaign called ‘Secret Formula’. Centred on the secret ingredients of Coca Cola, imagery related to Pemberton was used to make people more aware of the brand’s history and mythology.
Today, products of The Coca-Cola Company are consumed at the rate of more than 1.8 billion drinks per day. Last year, it was rated by Interbrand as one of the most valuable global brands, with a value of 69.73 billion US dollars. •
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