In the late 19th century, John D. Rockefeller’s buisness advisor Fredrick Gates had him to open a medical research institute
In the late 1800s Baptist minister Frederick Gates befriended Baptist philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, and in 1892 they founded the Baptist University of Chicago (which has since become nonsectarian). Gates became Rockefeller’s business advisor, who continued to help rehabilitate his cutthroat business reputation through strategic philanthropy, similar to Andrew Carnegie, and not much different from what is seen by people like Bill Gates (no relation) and Mark Zuckerberg today.
In the summer of 1897, Frederick Gates, a voracious reader, read Osler’s The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892). Seeing the disarray in the US medical profession, he believed that American medicine needed some of the same discipline Rockefeller brought to Standard Oil, and prodded Rockefeller to provide the funds to start his eponymous medical institute. Rockefeller was hardly a progressive, and believed in folk medicine as cure. But he also believed in money.
Standard Oil had an untapped asset/liability—coal tar, a by-product of coal mining and oil refining. Medical practitioners of the day used various preparations of coal tar to treat numerous proliferative skin diseases such as eczema and seborrhea (short-term treatment with coal tar is still occasionally used for this purpose). Rockefeller had a product to push, and he needed to create a mass market—so he founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research to engage in medical research so long as it researched the benefits of coal tar. It was up to Gates to find its first director. He contacted Osler directly, who recommended Simon Flexner. The institute opened for business in 1901, and Simon assumed the helm in 1903.
References
- Lustig, Robert. (2021). Metabolical Chapter 6. Because Big Pharma Was Their Teacher (p. 112). New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.