The first miracle drugs
Subtitle: how the sulfa drugs transformed medicine
By: John E. Lesch.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780195187755
Subjects: Sulphur drugs -- History; Antibacterial agents -- History; Sulfonamides -- history; Bacterial Infections -- drug therapy; History, 20th Century; Sulfonamides -- therapeutic use
Description: In the decade from 1935-1945, while the Second World War raged in Europe, a new class of medicines capable of controlling bacterial infections launched a therapeutic revolution that continues today. The new medicines were not penicillin and antibiotics, but sulfonamides, or sulfa drugs. The sulfa drugs preceded penicillin by almost a decade, and during World War II they carried the main therapeutic burden in both military and civilian medicine. Their success stimulated a rapid expansion of research and production in the international pharmaceutical industry, raised expectations of medicine, and accelerated the appearance of new and powerful medicines based on research. The latter development created new regulatory dilemmas and unanticipated therapeutic problems. The sulfa drugs also proved extraordinarily fruitful as starting points for new drugs or classes of drugs, both for bacterial infections and for a number of important non-infectious diseases.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Beginnings; title: A system of invention; title: Prontosil; title: Into the maelstrom; title: Accommodation and survival; title: Pathways of recognition; title: M & B 693; title: Acclaim and expansion; title: At war; title: Trial by fire; title: A mechanism revealed; title: The sulfa drugs and twentieth-century medicine.