[Pierre Famel, his pharmacy, laboratories and pharmaceutical products]

After difficult beginnings as a farm boy in Brittany, and then as a dish-washer at a chemist's in Paris, Pierre Famel (1855-1934) obtained his grammar certificate in 1879 and then his 2nd class chemist diploma from the Ecole de pharmacie de Paris in 1885. He was employed by the Laboratoire municipal de la Ville de Paris as an expert chemist. In 1886 he set himself up in a pharmacy at 86, rue de la Réunion, in Paris, known as the Pharmacie Famel. In 1912 he created the Laboratoires Famel for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products with sales representation in several European, North and South American as well as Canadian cities. He marketed among other things Famel Syrup, Famel suppositories, Langlebert glycophosphated wine, Sulfogène Famel and Optraex. The Famel firm obtained several awards at Exhibitions in France and elsewhere. On the death of Pierre Famel, the dispensary was sold, while his daughter and his granddaughter formed a partnership to manage the Laboratories. They still exist today as a finance company, the main activity of which is the management of its heritage. Pierre Famel was a foreign trade adviser, a vice-president of the Franco-Czechoslovakian and Franco-Iranian Chambers of Commerce. He created a prize for commercial attachés, as well as annual fellowships for students from foreign medical faculties. He was a sponsor of several youth clubs and charitable organizations, as well as a member of several Breton associations. He was the President of the Society of the Friends of the Pharmacology Faculty in Paris as well as the founder of the Museum devoted to Henri Moissan, the first French winner of the Nobel Price in Chemistry, who was for him a guide and a teacher in his early life and studies. He was a Commander of the Legion of Honour (1925) and was awarded the Gold Medal of foreign trade (1933). Also briefly mentioned are his wife, Marie Famel, an enamel painter, his daughter Yvonne Famel, and his son-in-law, Sylvain Rosengart, with whom he worked, as well as his granddaughter Yvonne Marie Rosengart-Famel, also a chemist.