Regulations of Medicines in the Territory of the Banal Croatia during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Interwar Period: The Legislative Aspect

Abstract

The variety of human diseases and necessity for curing them resulted in the appearance of medicines and medical treatments. Traditional or people’s medicines had been applied in the old times. Rulers realized over time the importance of getting medicines and medical treatments codified. Pharmacies, being in charge for the production of medicines, existed from 13th century. The Habsburg Monarchy proclaimed the General Sanitary Order (Das Generalsanitätsnormativum) in 1770, codifying that physicians should visit pharmacies and control their work once a year. The pharmaceutical industry has taken over medicines production in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century in Western Europe and North America, and new methods of medicines production has been occurring ever since.
The Banal Croatia, which included today’s Croatia without Međimurje, Baranja (Baranya), Istria and Dalmatia, had been relatively independent in the health policies in the period from 1869 to 1918, and passed the Law on Pharmacies in 1894. The Law stipulated the control of pharmacies rather than the control over the pharmaceutical industry. The traditional approach prevailed in healing of many different health issues at the times when modern medicines had not yet been developed. Pharmacists were barred from knowing the properties of medicines made by manufacturers, since manufacturers have kept ingredients and recipes of their sources of income secret. State was the only one privy to all of the properties of a medicine and such a medicine was usually known as „a secret remedy“. The Banal Croatia witnessed the birth of a large-scale manufacturing of secret remedies by companies held by Adolphe Thierry de Chateauvieux and Eugen Viktor Feller.
The interwar period saw the proliferation of the Croatian pharmaceutical industry. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in which the area of the Banal Croatia had been extended to Međimurje and Baranja, established the control of medicines made by the growing pharmaceutical industry. At first, the manufacturers were responsible for their products. In 1925 a state surveillance and control of medicines production and sale was established. It meant that the state had accepted the responsibility for the quality of medicines thereby making the state quality-proof assignments put on package inserts of medicines, as well as making the state registries and other documents regarding the medicines control. The Control of Biologics Act of 1930 made it clear that biological medicines are more important and that they treated efficiently the larger scope of health issues than chemical medicines had. The regulation related to the state control of medicines from the same year had been the biggest achievement of the interwar medicines state control. The regulation of medicines became an overall state affair, with the state comptrollers actively involved in the control of each and every batch of medicines.
Banovina Hrvatska, which had included the former Banal Croatia, created the state institutes for production as well as control of medicines aimed at the centralization and co-ordination of production and control of medicines. The assessment of the properties of medicines improved as well, from the control of harmlessness to the controls of purity and potency. The control of efficiency was introduced later.
The development of the production and regulation of medicines in the territory of Banal Croatia in the timeframe selected for this article moved in line with the development that occurred in the Western Europe and North America. When the Second World War broke out modern medicines regulation was already in existence.