With $2,500 borrowed from Charles Pfizer's father, cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart, young entrepreneurs from Germany, open Charles Pfizer & Company as a fine-chemicals business. A modest red-brick building in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, serves as office, laboratory, factory, and warehouse.
Their first product is a palatable form of santonin — an antiparasitic used to treat intestinal worms, a common affliction in mid-19th century America. Combining their skills, Pfizer, a chemist, and Erhart, a confectioner, blend santonin with almond-toffee flavoring and shape it into a candy cone. The "new" santonin is an immediate success and the company is launched.