Albert Sauter (1846 Thurgau - 1896 Geneva ) trained as a pharmacist in the canton of Thurgau then did an internship in a pharmacy in Geneva.
In 1873, he opened his pharmacy at Place des Alpes in Geneva. He creates products that soon find their way to his competitors. Anticipating the boom that ready-made medicines and particularly tablets would take, he decided to bring back from the United States two machines to compress, in other words, to manufacture tablets.
He thus became the first in Switzerland to inaugurate the manufacture of tablets in September 1878.
Small tablet box from Laboratoire A. Sauter. Early twentieth. On sale here.
Faced with growing success, he transformed his company into a public limited company in 1893. He expanded it considerably, developed his own machines, opened a clinic to treat patients with his own drugs, filed patents and created numerous subsidiaries in the abroad (Europe, America, Russia).
Production in the Sauter and Fidélis laboratories in the 1930s. Photo © Robert Ehrer
Beyond their field of manufacture first, to know the tablets, they created number of products. They were notably the first in Switzerland to make plasters for various uses (Sparablanc, Dermaplast, etc.) . All kinds of medications galenicals are thus created ( extracts, tinctures, elixirs, solutions, wines, syrups, emulsions) and all a series of shapes medicated news, such as than powders, pellets, bulbs, ointments, ova, gelatinous capsules , sweets and medicated chocolates , pastes toothpastes and cosmetics, etc
A. Sauter died in 1896 without a successor. Sauter Laboratories, which had hitherto occupied a dominant position in the Swiss pharmaceutical industry, are now experiencing numerous financial problems.
The company will finally be bought in 1958 by the Hoffmann group, La Roche (Basel)
