Health security comprises all the controls and surveillance proceedings for pharmaceuticals intended to protect public health. These proceedings changed under the influence of the scientific and technological progress, the manufacturers’ standards, the patients’ expectations and the government’s requirements. In the nineteenth century, public health protection was inspired by the rules of health policing and by the manufacturers’ will to market good quality drugs. This quality must be standardized: compulsory controls are set to check the drug formulae. During the twentieth century, the safety requirement matched the will to innovate. The discovery of the therapeutic risk leads to more stringent controls and new examinations. The sanitary crisis in the 1980’s allowed the patients to assert their expectations as do the manufacturers and the governments: this change led to the institutionalization of the health security and to an agreement on drug evaluation, according to the proof scheme, using legal systems and scientific methods.