BIEHN, Joseph F., Dr.

Wickenburg Sun, Wickenburg, Arizona December 14, 1967 Dr. Joseph Biehn Was Benefactor of Mankind A host of friend gathered in St. Anthony’s Catholic Church Monday morning at 10 o’clock to Dr. Joseph F. Biehn, a resident of Wickenburg for nearly 20 years, who died at 3:15 a.m. December 8 in Community Hospital here. Rosary was recited at 8:30 p.m. December 10 in the Wickenburg Funeral Home. Dr. Biehn was brought to the local hospital December 2 after extended hospitalization in Phoenix. He had been ill health for several years. Dr. Biehn was famed throughout the world of medicine and drugs for his research work and his contributions during his 41 years as an executive and director of Abbot Laboratories, the widely known pharmaceutical house in Chicago. During those years Dr. Biehn played a leading role in the discovery and development of sodium pentothal and Nembutal and conceived the idea of putting drugs in sealed glass ampoules instead of stopped bottles. The development of sodium pentothal was hailed as “the most significant advance in anesthesiology in decades.It came into its own in battlefield station treatment of the wounded in World War II. Nembutal, a barbiturate also developed by Dr. Biehn and his staff at abbot Laboratories, is universally known and prescribed by doctors the world over. Referring to his development of glass ampoules for drugs, Dr. Bioehn once said, “Nobody who ever pulled the stopper out of the old style bottle and smelled the stuff would ever want it injected in his vein.” Another achievement of which Dr. Biehn was justifiably proud and which endeared him to the theatrical circles of Chicago was his development of a method of fire-proofing theater curtains. While Biehn was serving as Director of the Chicago Health Department laboratories, the Iroquois Theatre fire December 30, 1903, took the lives of 602 men, women and children, many of them trampled to death in the panic which broke out when fire backstage spread to the theater curtain. That tragedy led to orders closing every theatre in the city pending the development of some method of fire-proofing curtains. Dr. Biehn went to work at one and in a very short time provided the required fire-proofing process and theatres were re-opened as fast as their curtains could be treated by his relatively simple solution to the problem. Dr. Biehn retired in 1950 after 41 years with the Abbott Laboratories. In September of 1966 officials of that firm came here to bestow upon him membership in the distinguished Hall of Fame of the Pharmaceutical Sales Division of Abbot Laboratories. He was born in Chicago April 1, 1878, was a graduate of the Medical College of Northwestern University and served on the staff of the Dearborn Medical College, also in Chicago. He is survived by one son, Robert G Biehn of Wickenburg; two sister, Mrs. Grace Evans, Chicago, and Mrs. Florence Stumpf, Aurora, Ill.; two granddaughters, Mrs. Rudolph Echeverria and Mrs. Anthony Serrano, both of Casa Grande; a grandson Joseph Esdale of Highland Park, Ill., and seven great-grandchildren.