Strong Medicine (novel)

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Strong Medicine is a 1984 novel by Arthur Hailey. The following is a book review, with the novel itself as a "source."

Celia Jordan (named after Arthur Hailey's second wife, Sheila) is an ambitious young pharmaceutical saleswoman beginning in the late 1950s. Because of her gender, however, it's unlikely that she will rise above senior sales person, if that. She is married to Dr. Andrew Jordan, who is worried about the new Thalidomide drug when it is introduced in the 1960s. Armed with this knowledge, she gets her big break when she writes a memo to senior management urging them not to sell the drug. The company's outgoing President, Eli Camperdown, personally thanks Celia from his deathbed, turning her into a company legend.

As a result, she acquires a high-level mentor, Sam Hawthorne, and a chance at the company's fast track. Guided by Sam, she has successful tours of duty at several subsidiary operations before being nominated for corporate Vice-President of Marketing under Sam, who has ridden her coattails to the Presidency of the company. In her new role, she will be tasked with marketing the company's new pregnancy drug. Dr. Jordan smells another rat, and warns her not to push what could be the "new Thalidomide." Sam chooses instead to listen to Dr. Vincent Lord, the Director of Research, who disparages Celia's knowledge of "science," and Celia resigns in protest. When the Jordans turn out to be right, Celia is asked to return to the company as Executive Vice-President and its de facto head, while Sam and another board member serve out "figurehead" Presidencies for legal reasons.

Celia is finally named President, but this is a hollow victory, because she has to deal with another problem of Vincent Lord's making that threatens to sink the company. Fortunately, she has a replacement for him; a British doctor that she hired to head up a "bootleg" research laboratory "offshore," who comes up with a blockbuster new drug. Even so, the fate of the company, and of Celia, is left hanging in the air as the novel ends.