Advertisements in professional Lithuanian pharmaceutical journals, 1923–1940

ENLithuanian pharmacists during the interwar period published two journals to meet their professional needs – "Farmacijos žinios" (Pharmacy News) and "Lietuvos farmaceutas" (Lithuanian Pharmacist). These journals also published advertisements for pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical items, and various other goods. This paper will analyze which products did Lithuanian and foreign companies advertise in the Lithuanian pharmaceutical journals and discuss the contents of these advertisements. During their early years, the pharmaceutical journals contained mostly advertisements for patented medicines, submitted by individual pharmacies. The Palanga’s pharmacy, for example, submitted the majority of such advertisements, including those for "Trejos Devynerios" (Three nines), "Essentia Cordialis" (essential cordial), and veterinary medications. Gradually, independent drug and chemical manufacturers emerged and started the mass production of drugs and chemicals. Individual pharmacies could not compete with them. This resulted in a decrease in the amount of advertisements from individual pharmacies and an increase in the amount of advertisements from the newly-established pharmaceutical companies and their distributors. The majority of the advertisements were submitted by such Lithuanian pharmaceutical companies as "GerMaPo" and "Sanitas" (the former being more active in their advertising campaign). Advertisements from distributors were abundant as well. They sold products of such well-known European producers as Knoll, Merck, C.F. Boehringer & Soehne, Sandoz, F. Hoffman-La Roch, J. D. Riedel, and E. Schering. Later on, foreign producers began to run their own advertising campaigns. German companies were the most active ones. Bayer and C.F. Boehringer & Soehne took the lead, while Merck, Knoll, and Hoechst were somewhat less active.The earliest advertisements resembled informational announcements. The advertisers would simply list their products without any praising comments, or simply state that "Sandėlyje yra visuomet viskas kas aptiekoms reikalinga" ("In our warehouse we have everything that pharmacies might need"). Only in the fourth decade, major foreign and Lithuanian producers started to use visual advertisement, logos, and suggestive texts. Advertisements of the Bayer company were the most creative in this respect.