Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2009
The assessment of drugs in Sweden has a long tradition that goes back to the seventeenth century when the Collegium Medicorum was established in 1663. One of its duties was to control the production of drugs in pharmacies. In 1688, Sweden got its first pharmacopoeia. In 1917, the Pharmaceutical Laboratory was founded as an advisory body of the National Board of Health and Welfare. The laboratory, now called the Department of Drugs, became responsible for evaluating drug applications, including information on their pharmaceutical and chemical properties, pharmacological actions, and clinical effects.