Complete Catalogue of the Products of the Laboratories of Parke, Davis & Co. Detroit, Mich., U. S. A. Revised to April, 1920.

Complete Catalogue of the Products of the Laboratories of Parke, Davis & Co. Detroit, Mich., U. S. A. Revised to April, 1920.

Cloth 8vo, 258pp. Very Good with intermittent pencil ghosts and soil, paper tabs curling at the corners. 3 copies in OCLC (NY Academy of Medicine, UNC Health Science Library, Pfizer). Assorted illustrations throughout, with a heavy concentration of graphics in the syringes section. “Narcotic Preparations” featuring Cocaine, Codeine, Morphine, Atrophine, Heroin, etc. “Specialties” include Brochial Sedative, Codeine Cough Sedative, Diarrhea Cordial, and “Chocolate-coated Tablets of Ovarian Substance, Dessicated (Whole Ovary)… Used for the relief of the nervous and trophic disturbances incidental to the menopause, and to control the vomiting of pregnancy.” (p. 184)

Now a subsidiary of Pfizer, Parke-Davis was once the largest drug producer in the United States. They patented a wide range of preparations and tools—before cocaine became classed as an illicit substance, Parke-Davis sold it in various forms including a mixture supplied with a needle for intravenous injection. Parke-Davis also produced a wide range of vaccines and patented Phencyclidine (PCP) in the 1950s.

Published the year after Aleister Crowley’s pilgrimage to the Parke-Davis laboratories in Detroit during his 1919 American tour, recorded in his diaries: “My first stop was Detroit, where Parke-Davis were charming and showed me over their wonderful chemical works. They had installed countless and ingenious devices for conducting the processes involved in manufacture by machinery. Many of these produced effects of exquisite beauty of a land till then dreamed of in my philosophy. A great mass of pills in a highly polished and rapidly revolving receiver was infinitely fascinating to watch. The spheres tumbled over each other with a rhythmical rise and fall in a rhythm which sang to the soul. They were kind enough to interest themselves in my researches in Anhalonium lewinii [peyote] and made me some special preparations on the lines indicated by my experience which proved greatly superior to previous preparations.”