Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:27:17.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multinational Enterprises and the Globalization of Medicine: Siemens and the Business of X-ray Equipment in Non-Western Markets, 1900–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2015

Pierre-Yves Donzé
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Whereas the globalization of medicine since the middle of the 19th century has primarily been approached as the sociopolitical and cultural outcome of imperialism, this article argues that Western big business also played a major role through the worldwide export of standardized medical technologies. It focuses on the expansion of Siemens on the X-ray equipment market in non-Western countries during the first half of the twentieth century. This German multinational enterprise experienced slight growth from the mid-1920s onwards but relied mainly on two markets (Argentina and Brazil). It specialized in providing large-scale equipment to a few urban hospitals and engaged during the 1930s in large-scale hospital development together with local authorities and international organizations in various countries (China, Peru, and Central Africa). However, Siemens had great difficulty in expanding its business to include private doctors and inland outlets, where it faced intense competition from other Western X-ray producers. This paper emphasizes that this shortcoming stemmed from a direct application of the European strategy (high-quality, expensive equipment for hospitals) to non-Western markets, where health systems differed.

Type
Manuscript
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 820 - 848
Copyright
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This work could not have been completed without the kind assistance of Doris-Maria Vittinghoff and Marcel Michels from Siemens MedArchiv in Erlangen (Germany). I thank Yuji Nishimuta (Kyoto University) and Alicia Suarez (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba). This research was partially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) 25380424.

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Amrith, Sunil S. Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Armus, Diego (ed.). Avatares de la medicalización en América Latina, 1870–1970. Buenos Aires: Lugar Editorial, 2005.Google Scholar
Armus, Diego (ed.). The Ailing City: Health, Tuberculosis, and Culture in Buenos Aires, 1870–1950. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Arnold, David. Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial India: The New Cambridge History of India, III – 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Blume, Stuart S. Insight and Industry: On the Dynamics of Technological Change in Medicine. Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Borowy, Iris. Coming to Terms with World Health: The League of Nations Health Organization 1921–1946. Berne: Peter Lang, 2009.Google Scholar
Brecher, Ruth Brecher, Edward. The Rays: A History of Radiology in the United States and Canada. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1969.Google Scholar
Bu, Liping Stapelton, Darwin H. Yip, Ka-che., eds. Science, Public Health and the State in Modern Asia. London and New York: Routledge, 2012.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Domin, Jean-Paul. Une histoire économique de l’hôpital: (XIXe - XXe siècles) Une analyse rétrospective du développement hospitalier–Tome I (1803–1945). Paris: La Documentation française, 2008.Google Scholar
Donzé, Pierre-Yves. L’ombre de César: les chirurgiens et la construction du système hospitalier vaudois, 1840–1960. Lausanne: BHMS, 2007.Google Scholar
Farely, John. To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (1913–1951). Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Feldenkirchen, Wilfried. Siemens 1914–1945. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
García, Oswaldo Salaverry., ed. Historia de la medicina peruana en el siglo XX. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2000.Google Scholar
Gradmann, Christoph Simon, Jonathan. Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890–1950. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.Google Scholar
Howell, Joel. Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
International Health Year-Book. Geneva: League of Nations, vol. 6, 1930.Google Scholar
Jacob-Wendler, Gerhart. Deutsche Elektroindustrie in Lateinamerika: Siemens und AEG (1890–1914). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982.Google Scholar
James, Harrold. The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001 Google Scholar
Janssen, Leon Medford, Gene. Envision: A History of the GE Healthcare Business. Waukesha: Meadow Brook Farm, 2009.Google Scholar
Labisch, Alfons Spree, Reinhardt, eds. Krankenhaus-Report 19. Jahrhundert. Krankenhausträger, Krankenhausfinanzierung, Krankenhauspatienten. Francfort: Campus, 2001.Google Scholar
Mathew, John. Dragon Multinationals: A New Model for Global Growth. Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Milton, Lewis J. MacPherson, Kerrie L., eds. Public Health in Asia and the Pacific: Historical and comparative perspectives. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Peyer, Hans C. Roche: Geschichte eines Unternehmens, 1896–1996. Basel: Roche, 1996.Google Scholar
Ramacciotti, Karina. La Política Sanitaria del Peronismo. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2009.Google Scholar
Ramacciotti, Karina Inés. “Las Instituciones sanitarias en la Argentina: Entre el Clamor de las Urgencias Sociales y la Planificación.” In Medicalización y Sociedad. Lecturas Críticas Sobre un Fenómeno en Expansiòn, edited by Ramacciotti, Karina Inés Cannellotto, Adrian Luctenberg, Edwin, 175–181. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de General San Martín, 2010.Google Scholar
Ramamurti, Ravi Singh, Jitendra V., eds. Emerging Multinationals from Emerging Markets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Rennicke, Stefan. Siemens in Argentinien: Die Unternehmensentwicklung vom Marketeintritt bis zur Enteignung 1945. Berlin: WVB, 2004.Google Scholar
Rodriguez, Julia. Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Sanitas, GmbH, ed. 100 Jahre Sanitas. Leipzig: Sanitas GmbH, 2001.Google Scholar
Stevens, Rosemary. In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Sturdivant, Frederick D. Growth through Service: The Story of the American Hospital Supply Corporation. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Veronelli, Juan Carlos Veronelli Correch, Magalí. Los orígenes institucionales de la Salud Pública en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Organización Panamericana de la Salud, 2004.Google Scholar
Vittinghoff, Doris-Maris Vollersten-Diewerge, Margrit. Max Gebbert & the Pioneers of Medical Engineering. Erlangen: Siemens Med Archives, 2008.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

“Association internationale des hôpitaux.” Annales médico-psychologiques, vol. 2.Google Scholar
Arns, Robert G. “The High-Vacuum X-Ray Tube: Technological Change in Social Context.” Technology and Culture 38 (1997): 852–890.Google Scholar
Boersma, Kees. “Tensions within and Industrial Research Laboratory: The Philips Laboratory’s X-Ray Department between the Wars.” Enterprise & Society 4 (2003): 65–98.Google Scholar
Coatsworth, John H. Williamson, Jeffrey G. “Always Protectionist? Latin American Tariffs from Independence to Great Depression.” Journal of Latin American Studies 36 (2004): 205–232.Google Scholar
Donzé, Pierre-Yves. “Making Medicine a Business in Japan: Shimadzu Co. and the Diffusion of Radiology (1900–1960).” Gesnerus. Swiss Journal of the History of Medicine and Sciences 67 (2010): 241–262.Google Scholar
Donzé, Pierre-Yves. “Siemens and the Business of Medicine in Japan, 1900–1945.” Business History Review 87 (2013): 203–228.Google Scholar
Fliho, Alves. “Manoel de Abreu, M.D., 1892–1962.” The American Journal of Roentgenology, Radium Therapy and Nuclear Medicine 87 (1962): 1167–1169.Google Scholar
Godley, Andrew. “Selling the Sewing Machine Around the World: Singer’s International Marketing Strategies, 1850–1920.” Enterprise & Society 7 (2006): 366–314.Google Scholar
Haller von Hallerstein, Dorothea. Der Auslandsabsatz elektromedizinischer Erzeugnisse. Nurnberg: Hochschule für Wirtschaft- und Sozialwissenschaften, Inaugural dissertation, 1954 (unpublished).Google Scholar
Kees, Boersma. “Tensions within an Industrial Research Laboratory: The Philips Laboratory’s X-Ray Department between the Wars.” Enterprise & Society 4 (2003): 65–98.Google Scholar
Kudo, Akira. Japanese-German Business Relations. Coopération and Rivalry in the Inter-war Period. London/New York: Routledge, 1998.Google Scholar
Lanciotti, Norma Silvana Lluch, Andrea. The Rise and “Decline” of European Companies in Argentina (1870-1945c): New Evidence and Discussion, paper given at the 15th Annual Conference of the European Business History Association, Athens, August 24–26, 2011.Google Scholar
Mutz, Mathias. “Going Global—Acting Local: Siemens in the Chinese Electrical Market, 1904–1937.” Essays in Economic & Business History 29 (2011): 5–22.Google Scholar
Romero Sá, Magali Benchimo, Jaime L. Kropf, Simone Viana, Larissa Candido da Silva, André Felipe. “Medicine, Science, and Power: Relations between France, Germany, and Brazil during 1919–1942.” História, Ciências, Saúde—Manguinhos 16 (2009): 247–261.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Charles. “Inward Vision and Outward Glance: The Shaping of the American Hospital, 1880–1914.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 53 (1979): 346–391.Google Scholar
Ross, Peter. “The Construction of the Public Health System in Argentina 1943–1955.” Electroneurobiología 15 (2007): 107–178.Google Scholar
Suarez-Viena, Alicia. “ La configuración Hospitalaria de la Provincia de Córdoba: el Accionar de los Agentes Civiles y Estatales (1880–1930).” Paper given at the 54th International Congress of Americanists, Vienna, July 2012.Google Scholar
Waltraud, Ernst, “Beyond East and West. From the History of Colonial Medicine to a Social History of Medicine(s) in South Asia.” Social History of Medicine 20 (2007): 505–524.Google Scholar
Weindling, Paul. “The League of Nations Health Organization and the Rise of Latin American participation, 1920–40.” História, Ciências, Saúde— Manguinhos 13 (2006): 1–14.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

Clinton Library, Digital Library, Holocaust Assets, Box 46, Annual Report, Office of Alien Property Custodian, June 30, 1944, http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/holocaustassets.html (last access: December 14, 2013).Google Scholar
National Archives, Washington (NARA), RG 94, Office of Military Governement U.S. (OMGUS), Report on Investigation of Siemens & Halske AG.Google Scholar
Siemens Archives (SAA), Munich (Germany) Google Scholar
Siemens Medical Archives (SMA), Erlangen (Germany) Google Scholar

Government Documents

Anuario del Comercio exterior de la Republica Argentina. Buenos Aires: Dirección General de Estadística de la Nación, 1930–1939.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (http://www.indec.gov.ar/, last accessed (March 3, 2013).Google Scholar