Dr. M. Block

       
    Dr. M. Block, wholesale druggist, is a native of France, born in 1832. He received his literary education in Metz, Lorraine. In 1857 he immigrated to the United States, spending his first two years in New York as clerk in a wholesale notion house. In 1859 he went to Chicago, where he taught French, while attending two courses of lectures at the Chicago Medical College, where he graduated in 1863, and at once entered the United States Army as acting assistant surgeon. In 1866 he was mustered out of the service as assistant surgeon, located in Chattanooga, engaged in the practice of his profession, in which he met with much success. Excessive labor broke down his health, which forced him to give up the practice. In 1868 he embarked in the drug business in co-partnership with his brother-in-law, Mr. Prosper Lazard, under the firm name of M. Block & Co. The combined capital of the partners being $22,500. In 1872 Dr. Block commenced traveling in north Alabama and Georgia in the interest of his house, laying the foundation of the wholesale drug business, in which the firm has met with such remarkably good success since. The firm keeps now two traveling salesmen on the road, has a regular laboratory in charge of a competent chemist, and owns several valuable propriatory articles, among others the well known Bee Hive Cough Syrup, a valuable expectorant that meets with large sales. In April, 1885, Mr. Lazard, owing to ill health, withdrew actively from the business. The firm name of M. Block & Co. is still retained, but will soon be changed (about July 1, 1887), in that of the M. Block Drug Company, under a recent charter obtained from the State of Tennessee. The new company will remove into larger quarters, and with an increase of capital will correspondingly increase its operations. Dr. Block married in 1865, and is the happy father of two daughters and two sons, one of the latter, Master Leo Block, a promising lad of seventeen, being order clerk at his father's store. The remarkable success of the firm is mainly due to the principle of strict honesty and rule of promptness adopted from the start. The Doctor enjoys a well merited social and professional reputation, has at one time been president of the board of education. He is now president of the Chattanooga Druggist Association, and vice- president of the East Tennessee Pharmacy Association.
Goodspeed's "History of East Tennessee" 1887