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The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.
Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness.
A strange and colorful story, The Demon Under the Microscope illuminates the vivid characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism, heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa to the world. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue of a great suspense novel.
For thousands of years, humans had sought medicines with which they could defeat contagion, and they had slowly, painstakingly, won a few battles: some vaccines to ward off disease, a handful of antitoxins. A drug or two was available that could stop parasitic diseases once they hit, tropical maladies like malaria and sleeping sickness. But the great killers of Europe, North America, and most of Asia—pneumonia, plague, tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, meningitis—were caused not by parasites but by bacteria, much smaller, far different microorganisms. By 1931, nothing on earth could stop a bacterial infection once it started. . . .
But all that was about to change. . . . —from The Demon Under the Microscope
Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness.
A strange and colorful story, The Demon Under the Microscope illuminates the vivid characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism, heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa to the world. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue of a great suspense novel.
For thousands of years, humans had sought medicines with which they could defeat contagion, and they had slowly, painstakingly, won a few battles: some vaccines to ward off disease, a handful of antitoxins. A drug or two was available that could stop parasitic diseases once they hit, tropical maladies like malaria and sleeping sickness. But the great killers of Europe, North America, and most of Asia—pneumonia, plague, tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, meningitis—were caused not by parasites but by bacteria, much smaller, far different microorganisms. By 1931, nothing on earth could stop a bacterial infection once it started. . . .
But all that was about to change. . . . —from The Demon Under the Microscope
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First published September 19, 2006
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Thomas Hager
19 books311 followersHow science and technology change our lives. I believe in facts.
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May 3, 2020
The story of sulfa drugs makes for good reading, but the author’s fascination with the scientist behind their discovery turns this book into an un-asked-for defense of the German people’s conduct during the Nazi era. The author’s story is uneven, so I’ll go from the bad to the good.
Hager’s book could have been thirty or forty pages shorter. He takes too long describing the experiments leading to the isolation of a sulfa drug by Dr. Gerhard Domagk, who one day would win a Nobel prize for it. He lingers too much over the Great War and wastes too many pages on the rollout of the new drug. The author explains away a shocking scandal in which Domagk’s employer sat on his discovery for two years, and he depicts the Pasteur Institute as a dump whose nihilistic reasearchers were out to destroy the profitability of the German discovery just for the fun of it.
Because Hager identifies so much with Dr. Domagk the full story of sulfa loses its way. Dr. Domagk was a German scientist working for a German conglomerate in the runup to World War II, so the author feels it necessary to defend the actions of the German people and even individual Nazis to save his hero from accusations nobody ever made. Hager thus drags out the old tu quoque about the awful things the Americans and Russians did, ruining even that by deploring how invading American troops simply ruined Dr. Domagk’s formal dinner jacket. Are you kidding me? When Domagk’s involvement with sulfa ends, so does Hager’s story. The author, in short, doesn’t say enough about the right things.
Still, scientific discoveries are natural stories for human curiosity. Would you like to guess the main causes of hospital deaths in 1930? If you were born after that time, you probably have no idea. Hager does a good job framing the state of medical science which drove the search for chemical antibiotics. A skillful juxtaposition of the lives of the sons of two American presidents illustrates two separate worlds, a world of terror at the prospect of infections of any kind, followed by a glorious new world brought about by sulfa in which any illness seemed curable. It’s here that Hager does his best work, helping to remind us of a time sulfa allowed us to forget about in the astonishing space of a single year.
I rated this book just an “okay” read because the weaknesses outweigh the strengths and the final chapter is a cut-and-paste job with no value for readers. But the story of sulfa is fascinating, and if you’re interested (and you should be) you may well find it worthwhile to plow through the annoying parts of the story for the sake of the better ones.
Hager’s book could have been thirty or forty pages shorter. He takes too long describing the experiments leading to the isolation of a sulfa drug by Dr. Gerhard Domagk, who one day would win a Nobel prize for it. He lingers too much over the Great War and wastes too many pages on the rollout of the new drug. The author explains away a shocking scandal in which Domagk’s employer sat on his discovery for two years, and he depicts the Pasteur Institute as a dump whose nihilistic reasearchers were out to destroy the profitability of the German discovery just for the fun of it.
Because Hager identifies so much with Dr. Domagk the full story of sulfa loses its way. Dr. Domagk was a German scientist working for a German conglomerate in the runup to World War II, so the author feels it necessary to defend the actions of the German people and even individual Nazis to save his hero from accusations nobody ever made. Hager thus drags out the old tu quoque about the awful things the Americans and Russians did, ruining even that by deploring how invading American troops simply ruined Dr. Domagk’s formal dinner jacket. Are you kidding me? When Domagk’s involvement with sulfa ends, so does Hager’s story. The author, in short, doesn’t say enough about the right things.
Still, scientific discoveries are natural stories for human curiosity. Would you like to guess the main causes of hospital deaths in 1930? If you were born after that time, you probably have no idea. Hager does a good job framing the state of medical science which drove the search for chemical antibiotics. A skillful juxtaposition of the lives of the sons of two American presidents illustrates two separate worlds, a world of terror at the prospect of infections of any kind, followed by a glorious new world brought about by sulfa in which any illness seemed curable. It’s here that Hager does his best work, helping to remind us of a time sulfa allowed us to forget about in the astonishing space of a single year.
I rated this book just an “okay” read because the weaknesses outweigh the strengths and the final chapter is a cut-and-paste job with no value for readers. But the story of sulfa is fascinating, and if you’re interested (and you should be) you may well find it worthwhile to plow through the annoying parts of the story for the sake of the better ones.
June 25, 2014
It is interesting that I read this book concurrently with Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking, wherein her daughter nearly succumbs to sepsis created by the flu. I remember reading through those chapters and thinking, “my god this still happens!” I know factually that people still die from sepsis from bacteria and viruses; my childhood hero, Jim Henson passed in that same manner with pneumonia. I even know, logically, that this CAN happen to people in their prime- recently a local police officer passed from the flu. These things happen, all over the place, and all the time, but now it’s rare enough its reported. I know these things logically, but I do not know them emotionally because this type of loss has been incredibly rare for everyone born after the “discovery/invention” of sulfa medicines and the rebirth of medicine that it spawned. People used to understand that a simple disease could suddenly take control of your body. A measly eighty years ago no one was untouched by that sort of death.
My own father has a scar on his neck where the doctors had to cut in to treat a severe staph infection he received in the nursery at the hospital. Years later, another baby, born the same day as him, died from a staph infection kept in the same nursery he had been. He said it always gave him the chills to think about. Yet childbirth was one of the first near death experiences that almost everyone faced. It’s a wonder that Freud never looked into that (or maybe he did), we came into the world potentially blinded from gonorrhea, weakened and defenseless against strep, staph, childbed fever, a simple cold, tuberculosis. Name it. Every baby born in a hospital before sulfa and semi-modern hygiene practices was nearly born one foot in the grave. Labor wards resembled morgues more than today’s thriving delivery wards.
This book really makes you appreciate that. It makes you appreciate the staggering amount of human suffering despite doctor’s best (and not always misguided) efforts from medieval times to the early 1900’s. It also makes you appreciate the up-hill battle to understand what was happening in our bodies when we were infected and how to stop it. It makes you appreciate what you have now .
I thought that the author did a fantastic job of weaving interesting side-stories into the narrative. The horrors of WWI that set Domagk on a path to end the curse of infection, made you understand what could drive a man to fail for years, all the while believing that there was something out there that would act as a panacea. There were stories that strengthened the reader’s understanding of the importance of sulfa- it saved Churchill’s life in the middle of the war, it saved thousands and thousands of soldier’s lives during the war, soldiers that had this been WWI, would have just died. He really let you see the world wide impact that it had- it helped form the FDA, it saved hundreds maybe thousands of Africans and Islanders. He brought the humanity back into medicine and let the reader see how the world became so transformed its nearly unrecognizable from then to now. Sure the doctors were catty, and maybe purposely obtuse. The evil of the Nazi’s cannot be overstated. Neither can the fear that many non-Nazi Germans felt within their own country at the time. America’s FDA had a rocky start, and hundreds needed to die before anything managed to get changed because of lobbyists. But it was a good story. And an important one. I definitely recommend it, though be prepared for it to slow down at times.
My own father has a scar on his neck where the doctors had to cut in to treat a severe staph infection he received in the nursery at the hospital. Years later, another baby, born the same day as him, died from a staph infection kept in the same nursery he had been. He said it always gave him the chills to think about. Yet childbirth was one of the first near death experiences that almost everyone faced. It’s a wonder that Freud never looked into that (or maybe he did), we came into the world potentially blinded from gonorrhea, weakened and defenseless against strep, staph, childbed fever, a simple cold, tuberculosis. Name it. Every baby born in a hospital before sulfa and semi-modern hygiene practices was nearly born one foot in the grave. Labor wards resembled morgues more than today’s thriving delivery wards.
This book really makes you appreciate that. It makes you appreciate the staggering amount of human suffering despite doctor’s best (and not always misguided) efforts from medieval times to the early 1900’s. It also makes you appreciate the up-hill battle to understand what was happening in our bodies when we were infected and how to stop it. It makes you appreciate what you have now .
I thought that the author did a fantastic job of weaving interesting side-stories into the narrative. The horrors of WWI that set Domagk on a path to end the curse of infection, made you understand what could drive a man to fail for years, all the while believing that there was something out there that would act as a panacea. There were stories that strengthened the reader’s understanding of the importance of sulfa- it saved Churchill’s life in the middle of the war, it saved thousands and thousands of soldier’s lives during the war, soldiers that had this been WWI, would have just died. He really let you see the world wide impact that it had- it helped form the FDA, it saved hundreds maybe thousands of Africans and Islanders. He brought the humanity back into medicine and let the reader see how the world became so transformed its nearly unrecognizable from then to now. Sure the doctors were catty, and maybe purposely obtuse. The evil of the Nazi’s cannot be overstated. Neither can the fear that many non-Nazi Germans felt within their own country at the time. America’s FDA had a rocky start, and hundreds needed to die before anything managed to get changed because of lobbyists. But it was a good story. And an important one. I definitely recommend it, though be prepared for it to slow down at times.
November 30, 2022
This book contains an interesting collection of historical science, medicine, and biography telling the story of the human fight against bacterial infections. The book’s primary focus is on the development of antibacterial sulfa drugs. The book’s narrative centers around the biographic account of Gerhard Domagk’s life, a German physician who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his part in the development of Sulfa drugs, but he was then forced by the Nazis to decline the prize (he was able to receive it after the war). There are also numerous stories of related events and mini biographies of other individuals included in the book.
The following is a reminder of how things were not that long ago:
The heart of this book's story is a description of the persistent hard work in the laboratories of Bayer AG during the 1920s and early 30s. Some successful medicines had been found for syphilis, malaria, and sleeping sickness, and they hoped they could find a chemical treatment of bacterial infections inside the body. After many years of synthesizing hundreds of hydrocarbon compounds and testing them on infected mice they finally found one that worked. It was a red dye compound with a sulfonamide chain attached which they patented in 1932 and announced publicly in 1935 in anticipation of profitable sales.
Later the Germans were embarrassed when the French Pasteur Institute discovered that the sulfonamide portion alone was the active antibacterial agent. The dye portion of the molecule had no medicinal effect. This was bad news for the Bayer laboratories because sulfonamide was a low cost chemical widely available in bulk quantities. However, researchers were later able to develop numerous variations to fine tune its performance as a medicine.
It was received as a miracle drug, and the book recounts several examples of lives saved by the new sulfa drugs. Hundreds of manufacturers jumped on the band wagon and unfortunately the lack of testing requirement led to the Elixir of Sulfanilamide disaster in the fall of 1937. The widely publicized news of resulting numerous poisonings led to the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938 in the United States.
The book tells of the effective use of sulfa drugs during World War II, and they are credited with preventing many wound infections. American soldiers were issued a first-aid kit containing sulfa pills and powder and were told to sprinkle it on any open wound.
I was surprised to learn that Hitler didn't like testing medicines on animals (in his mind it was too Jewish). On the other hand he apparently had no problem with testing on human prisoners in the concentration camps. Among the tests performed in the camps were tests on the effectiveness of sulfa drugs.
The book ends with an Epilog that acknowledges the discovery and widespread use of penicillin and other microbial based antibiotics and how sulfa drug use has diminished to select and limited applications. Millions of lives have been saved since the advent of antibiotics, and who knows how many of us would be alive today were it not for antibiotics. It's a reality that is easy to take for granted. However there is a looming problem of the development of antibacterial resistance among those crafty microbes. They may not be finished with us.
The following is a reminder of how things were not that long ago:
In 1931 ... Western Nations people were ... thoroughly modern. But. in at least one important way, they had advanced little more than prehistoric humans: They were almost helpless in the face of bacterial infection. (p.1)The beginning portion of the book provides a scary description of life before antibiotics by telling the stories of the prevalence of death due to infection in past years. Two examples are (1) in WWI deaths from infected wounds exceeded direct battlefield deaths, and (2) deaths from postpartum infections regularly reached epidemic levels in some hospitals. These were gruesome stories.
The heart of this book's story is a description of the persistent hard work in the laboratories of Bayer AG during the 1920s and early 30s. Some successful medicines had been found for syphilis, malaria, and sleeping sickness, and they hoped they could find a chemical treatment of bacterial infections inside the body. After many years of synthesizing hundreds of hydrocarbon compounds and testing them on infected mice they finally found one that worked. It was a red dye compound with a sulfonamide chain attached which they patented in 1932 and announced publicly in 1935 in anticipation of profitable sales.
Later the Germans were embarrassed when the French Pasteur Institute discovered that the sulfonamide portion alone was the active antibacterial agent. The dye portion of the molecule had no medicinal effect. This was bad news for the Bayer laboratories because sulfonamide was a low cost chemical widely available in bulk quantities. However, researchers were later able to develop numerous variations to fine tune its performance as a medicine.
It was received as a miracle drug, and the book recounts several examples of lives saved by the new sulfa drugs. Hundreds of manufacturers jumped on the band wagon and unfortunately the lack of testing requirement led to the Elixir of Sulfanilamide disaster in the fall of 1937. The widely publicized news of resulting numerous poisonings led to the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938 in the United States.
The book tells of the effective use of sulfa drugs during World War II, and they are credited with preventing many wound infections. American soldiers were issued a first-aid kit containing sulfa pills and powder and were told to sprinkle it on any open wound.
I was surprised to learn that Hitler didn't like testing medicines on animals (in his mind it was too Jewish). On the other hand he apparently had no problem with testing on human prisoners in the concentration camps. Among the tests performed in the camps were tests on the effectiveness of sulfa drugs.
The book ends with an Epilog that acknowledges the discovery and widespread use of penicillin and other microbial based antibiotics and how sulfa drug use has diminished to select and limited applications. Millions of lives have been saved since the advent of antibiotics, and who knows how many of us would be alive today were it not for antibiotics. It's a reality that is easy to take for granted. However there is a looming problem of the development of antibacterial resistance among those crafty microbes. They may not be finished with us.
March 2, 2015
~4.5
Even as late as the 1930s, an infection was a likely death sentence. Even a small wound on a finger or toe could be deadly, for if it became septic, doctors could do nothing except hope that the patient could fight off the infection. Antibiotics were only a wistful dream of a universal panacea. After all, how could one create a medicine that would unerringly target the bacterial foe while leaving all of the diverse cells of the body intact?
Everything changed with the invention of sulfa. Sulfanilamide, or sulfa, which is still used today in familiar drugs such as Bactrim, was the first widely-known antibiotic, its effectiveness discovered by the German pathologist Gerhard Domagk. The story of sulfa--its invention, the race to production, the ironic twist in its usage, the growing tensions between Germany and the rest of the world--is all utterly fascinating and probably obscure to most of us. Because of that, I won’t describe the best parts of the story--it’s far better to reach the delicious ironies unaware.
Hager is a fantastic storyteller. He weaves together the story of sulfa from a series of related episodes, digressing into everything from Domagk’s war experiences to the disastrous patent medicine incident in the United States to the French techniques of corporate espionage to the sulfa experiments on the women of Ravensbruck, yet somehow creating a harmonious whole. My only real complaint is that these digressions tend to make the book jump around a lot in time so that I had difficulty reconstructing the chronology.
Hager packs a tremendous amount of history into the story, and the impact of these practically forgotten figures is utterly startling. Many of these stories, such as the lab assistant who accidentally inoculated himself with “super strep” and was forced to experiment with his own treatments-- are so fantastic and so perfectly fitting that it is hard to believe they are fact rather than fiction. The stories of the characters' war experiences are so dramatic that I had to double-check them before I could believe the text. Oddly, one extraneous detail that really stuck with me was an offhanded comment about Hitler's vehement dislike of animal testing. How could a man who outlawed animal testing be so ready to substitute them with humans? I know Hitler was a monster and that much of what he did was even more illogical, but that bizarre inconsistency still somehow continues to trouble me. One of my favourites from the beginning of the book is the story of childbed fever, a.k.a. “The Doctor’s Plague.” First seen in the 1600s, it took centuries of dead women before people began to notice an odd pattern. While doctors’ patients tended to die in droves, those treated by midwives, even in the same hospitals, had a good chance of never catching the disease. It took even longer for someone to discover the moral of the story: if you’ve just finished an autopsy of one victim of childbed fever, it might be nice to wash your hands before sticking them up another.
If you have even a mild interest in medical history, then I’d definitely recommend taking a look at The Demon in the Microscope. There’s nothing quite as magical as a gifted storyteller with a fascinating story to tell.
Even as late as the 1930s, an infection was a likely death sentence. Even a small wound on a finger or toe could be deadly, for if it became septic, doctors could do nothing except hope that the patient could fight off the infection. Antibiotics were only a wistful dream of a universal panacea. After all, how could one create a medicine that would unerringly target the bacterial foe while leaving all of the diverse cells of the body intact?
Everything changed with the invention of sulfa. Sulfanilamide, or sulfa, which is still used today in familiar drugs such as Bactrim, was the first widely-known antibiotic, its effectiveness discovered by the German pathologist Gerhard Domagk. The story of sulfa--its invention, the race to production, the ironic twist in its usage, the growing tensions between Germany and the rest of the world--is all utterly fascinating and probably obscure to most of us. Because of that, I won’t describe the best parts of the story--it’s far better to reach the delicious ironies unaware.
Hager is a fantastic storyteller. He weaves together the story of sulfa from a series of related episodes, digressing into everything from Domagk’s war experiences to the disastrous patent medicine incident in the United States to the French techniques of corporate espionage to the sulfa experiments on the women of Ravensbruck, yet somehow creating a harmonious whole. My only real complaint is that these digressions tend to make the book jump around a lot in time so that I had difficulty reconstructing the chronology.
Hager packs a tremendous amount of history into the story, and the impact of these practically forgotten figures is utterly startling. Many of these stories, such as the lab assistant who accidentally inoculated himself with “super strep” and was forced to experiment with his own treatments-- are so fantastic and so perfectly fitting that it is hard to believe they are fact rather than fiction. The stories of the characters' war experiences are so dramatic that I had to double-check them before I could believe the text. Oddly, one extraneous detail that really stuck with me was an offhanded comment about Hitler's vehement dislike of animal testing. How could a man who outlawed animal testing be so ready to substitute them with humans? I know Hitler was a monster and that much of what he did was even more illogical, but that bizarre inconsistency still somehow continues to trouble me. One of my favourites from the beginning of the book is the story of childbed fever, a.k.a. “The Doctor’s Plague.” First seen in the 1600s, it took centuries of dead women before people began to notice an odd pattern. While doctors’ patients tended to die in droves, those treated by midwives, even in the same hospitals, had a good chance of never catching the disease. It took even longer for someone to discover the moral of the story: if you’ve just finished an autopsy of one victim of childbed fever, it might be nice to wash your hands before sticking them up another.
If you have even a mild interest in medical history, then I’d definitely recommend taking a look at The Demon in the Microscope. There’s nothing quite as magical as a gifted storyteller with a fascinating story to tell.
July 27, 2021
You sit at the dentist’s office with a tooth abscess, and he prescribes antibiotics and magically after 5 days the infection is gone. Have you ever wondered how antibiotics came to be?
There are a lot of players in this historical account and in part it’s a biography of the Nobel Prize winner Domagk and his discovery of sulfa (now known as antibiotics). The impact of sulfa-drugs on the world also showed how the UK and USA were affected by this new wonder drug and the rise of snake-oil salesmen that lead to the formation of the FDA in the USA.
The story touches on the highly unethical forced mutilations and deliberate infections that were conducted in Ravensburg. Women, who became known as the Rabbits, were subjected to the most horrific experiments in the name of “science”.
This book also outlines where the concept of Big Pharma came from (hint it started in Germany from the dye industry). And very importantly it also shows just how business driven and politically influenced pharmaceutical research became.
Yes, it may be the lone researcher that to investigate something novel because of scientific curiosity but it’s the company he works for and political influence that determine the direction of the research.
Somehow, I managed to read two medical non-fiction books in the last few months that focus on medical research and the impact WW2 and Nazi Germany had on the scientific community and I have to say I loved both!
If you enjoyed Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection for its outline of medical research during WW2 then you will definitely enjoy this one too.
Recommended for anyone with an interest in medical research and discoveries.
There are a lot of players in this historical account and in part it’s a biography of the Nobel Prize winner Domagk and his discovery of sulfa (now known as antibiotics). The impact of sulfa-drugs on the world also showed how the UK and USA were affected by this new wonder drug and the rise of snake-oil salesmen that lead to the formation of the FDA in the USA.
The story touches on the highly unethical forced mutilations and deliberate infections that were conducted in Ravensburg. Women, who became known as the Rabbits, were subjected to the most horrific experiments in the name of “science”.
This book also outlines where the concept of Big Pharma came from (hint it started in Germany from the dye industry). And very importantly it also shows just how business driven and politically influenced pharmaceutical research became.
Yes, it may be the lone researcher that to investigate something novel because of scientific curiosity but it’s the company he works for and political influence that determine the direction of the research.
Somehow, I managed to read two medical non-fiction books in the last few months that focus on medical research and the impact WW2 and Nazi Germany had on the scientific community and I have to say I loved both!
If you enjoyed Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection for its outline of medical research during WW2 then you will definitely enjoy this one too.
Recommended for anyone with an interest in medical research and discoveries.
June 3, 2010
One of the best examples of clear, compelling scientific writing I've ever come across. Though I've studied organic chemistry and medical science for years, I never knew the amazing impact of sulfa--ranging from transformation of the medical profession, to the great influence it had on the way WWII was fought, to the creation of the FDA. Anyone interested in good science or historical writing really should pick this one up. For those interested in medicine, pharmacology, and infectious disease, this book is mandatory reading!
June 26, 2018
I tend to like medical thrillers, then to I like nonfiction about medical breakthroughs and medical advances. This book does lay out a story but it gets sidetracked from its given premise.
We are told we'll be looking at the development of Sulfa and it's effect on medicine and bacterial disease. We do but in a very round about way. The book turns into a series of short biographies. These don't actually hold up well (at least for me) as they to tended to wander a bit.
Just me of course but I didn't really get into this book at all. For me it was a put aside and forget book. I'd put off getting back to it. See what you think. Many readers liked it. I suppose it could be that it simply didn't catch my interest. Maybe try this one yourself.
We are told we'll be looking at the development of Sulfa and it's effect on medicine and bacterial disease. We do but in a very round about way. The book turns into a series of short biographies. These don't actually hold up well (at least for me) as they to tended to wander a bit.
Just me of course but I didn't really get into this book at all. For me it was a put aside and forget book. I'd put off getting back to it. See what you think. Many readers liked it. I suppose it could be that it simply didn't catch my interest. Maybe try this one yourself.
February 10, 2020
The one man is Gerhard Domagk, but there is so much more. Domagk's story, while integral, is just one part. He was undoubtedly dogged, as evidenced by 5 years of amazingly precise & thorough testing, especially for the times. He was a great man as we find out at toward the end. Not only did he stand up to the Nazis, but he warned against antibiotic resistance early.
Hager does a great job of tracing medicine from well before & into the 1950s. He focuses on Sulfa & its wild story from an outgrowth of an industrial dye complex to patent medicines in the US, through crazy patenting issues, & almost unbelievable testing & use until it was outshone by penicillin, but it didn't appear in a vacuum. There was a lot going on in the world including World Wars & overturning medicine as a whole. That's the real story here.
I was very surprised by how precise the early chemists could be in creating new molecules. I was equally shocked by the lack of testing of medicines. When they were tested, it was the poor, the 'lost' cases, & military that were in the front lines, if it wasn't the scientist or his family. Medical ethics of the day were incredible.
Very well narrated. While Hager was occasionally repetitive, he often needed to be to draw various threads together. In the last chapter, he summarizes the book & threads. I appreciated that. It was a long, wonderful trip. Highly recommended not just for the medical history, but for all else that was included.
Hager does a great job of tracing medicine from well before & into the 1950s. He focuses on Sulfa & its wild story from an outgrowth of an industrial dye complex to patent medicines in the US, through crazy patenting issues, & almost unbelievable testing & use until it was outshone by penicillin, but it didn't appear in a vacuum. There was a lot going on in the world including World Wars & overturning medicine as a whole. That's the real story here.
I was very surprised by how precise the early chemists could be in creating new molecules. I was equally shocked by the lack of testing of medicines. When they were tested, it was the poor, the 'lost' cases, & military that were in the front lines, if it wasn't the scientist or his family. Medical ethics of the day were incredible.
Very well narrated. While Hager was occasionally repetitive, he often needed to be to draw various threads together. In the last chapter, he summarizes the book & threads. I appreciated that. It was a long, wonderful trip. Highly recommended not just for the medical history, but for all else that was included.
February 20, 2020
This is a really excellent book that taught me so much I didn't know.
I never knew how important sulfa drugs were in the history of antibacterials. I had always assumed that penicillin was the first successful antibacterial drug, but it appears that sulfa drugs had a much earlier impact. Also, even though penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming, nothing came of his discovery until Florey and Chain produced it on a mass scale. Florey and Chain deserve much greater credit than Fleming does.
But this book doesn't really go into that story so much. Instead, it focuses on the development of Sulfa drugs and the tragic life of its discoverer (like the incredible story of his journey to get his Nobel Prize). It does a great job describing the race for different producers to come up with variant designs, some of which were even better than Domagk's original design.
There's a real lesson here about how medical innovation operates. Taken together with the Elixir incident covered in the later chapters, it also shows how delicate the balance between too much and too little regulation of drugs. It leaves one to wonder whether a stricter FDA would have prevented the Elixir poisoning, but would also have stopped or slowed down the rapid innovation of the other sulfa compounds, leaving Domagk's inferior molecule as the only established safe option, which didn't work as well for syphilis, for example. And that doesn't even consider the effect of patent law on this question.
It's not a question Hager discusses too much in this book, but reading the story in such detail gives you enough facts to think about the positive and negative impact of patent law and regulation upon the medical industry and drug innovation.
I never knew how important sulfa drugs were in the history of antibacterials. I had always assumed that penicillin was the first successful antibacterial drug, but it appears that sulfa drugs had a much earlier impact. Also, even though penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming, nothing came of his discovery until Florey and Chain produced it on a mass scale. Florey and Chain deserve much greater credit than Fleming does.
But this book doesn't really go into that story so much. Instead, it focuses on the development of Sulfa drugs and the tragic life of its discoverer (like the incredible story of his journey to get his Nobel Prize). It does a great job describing the race for different producers to come up with variant designs, some of which were even better than Domagk's original design.
There's a real lesson here about how medical innovation operates. Taken together with the Elixir incident covered in the later chapters, it also shows how delicate the balance between too much and too little regulation of drugs. It leaves one to wonder whether a stricter FDA would have prevented the Elixir poisoning, but would also have stopped or slowed down the rapid innovation of the other sulfa compounds, leaving Domagk's inferior molecule as the only established safe option, which didn't work as well for syphilis, for example. And that doesn't even consider the effect of patent law on this question.
It's not a question Hager discusses too much in this book, but reading the story in such detail gives you enough facts to think about the positive and negative impact of patent law and regulation upon the medical industry and drug innovation.
December 22, 2022
Read this for a challenge and learned a lot. Some was really interesting, and some was a bit dull.
July 2, 2022
It is always a treat to pick up a book with a certain expectation and find something else completely. This book was very enjoyable. Methodical in its approach, which for some can be seen as boring or slow, however the whole antibiotics enlightenment is tied up very nicely. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone, especially if they work in or have an interest in healthcare.
Although we commonly say penicillin was the first antibiotic discovered, it’s discovery and eventual use was over a decade apart due to the discovery of sulfa and its groundbreaking antimicrobial properties. Sulfa revolutionized medicine by pioneering scientific research, helping provide the need and creation of the FDA (through improper use 😳), patent medicine, medical ethics, playing a key role in the formation of pharmaceutical giants and providing the average doctor the power to cure previously untreatable disease. This amazing medication was the precursor to drugs we still use today that treat diabetes, hypertension, malaria and other common maladies. It ushered in a period of great health prosperity with the drop in infantile death tolls by 90% and life expectancy increasing by ten years.
Sulfa reached beyond medicine influencing the outcome of World War II, international law practices and food processing applications still used today.
It is easy to look at this as all sunshine and roses, however the creation of this drug coincided with the rise of Nazis Germany. Unethical and inhumane practices on Jews and other marginalized groups play a role in it’s past and leave a shadow on its legacy.
All this and more were discussed in organized, well thought out detail that I found to be very riveting.
For me personally this book stands out as it looks at the paradigm shift in how physicians view themselves and their relationship with their patients. Prior to sulfa, and other antibiotics, doctors provided mostly comfort care and stayed out of the way of the natural immune system. They felt hopeless when confronted with pneumonia, meningitis and other high mortality infections. Now, physicians play a key role in curing these diseases. Bacterial infections no longer are looked at as a death sentence. I’m not trying to say all people recover from all infections but hope and expectations for recover have forever been changed thanks to the creation of sulfa.
This is probably my longest review… which speaks to how this book moved me. My favourite non-fiction book of the year.
Although we commonly say penicillin was the first antibiotic discovered, it’s discovery and eventual use was over a decade apart due to the discovery of sulfa and its groundbreaking antimicrobial properties. Sulfa revolutionized medicine by pioneering scientific research, helping provide the need and creation of the FDA (through improper use 😳), patent medicine, medical ethics, playing a key role in the formation of pharmaceutical giants and providing the average doctor the power to cure previously untreatable disease. This amazing medication was the precursor to drugs we still use today that treat diabetes, hypertension, malaria and other common maladies. It ushered in a period of great health prosperity with the drop in infantile death tolls by 90% and life expectancy increasing by ten years.
Sulfa reached beyond medicine influencing the outcome of World War II, international law practices and food processing applications still used today.
It is easy to look at this as all sunshine and roses, however the creation of this drug coincided with the rise of Nazis Germany. Unethical and inhumane practices on Jews and other marginalized groups play a role in it’s past and leave a shadow on its legacy.
All this and more were discussed in organized, well thought out detail that I found to be very riveting.
For me personally this book stands out as it looks at the paradigm shift in how physicians view themselves and their relationship with their patients. Prior to sulfa, and other antibiotics, doctors provided mostly comfort care and stayed out of the way of the natural immune system. They felt hopeless when confronted with pneumonia, meningitis and other high mortality infections. Now, physicians play a key role in curing these diseases. Bacterial infections no longer are looked at as a death sentence. I’m not trying to say all people recover from all infections but hope and expectations for recover have forever been changed thanks to the creation of sulfa.
This is probably my longest review… which speaks to how this book moved me. My favourite non-fiction book of the year.
March 1, 2020
This was an excellent history of the development of the sulfa drugs in the period between the two World Wars. These were the first chemicals developed to cure infections in humans and they started a huge antibiotic industry. It focuses primarily on the German researcher Gerhard Domagk, but also makes very clear how very many different people were involved in the enterprise. It's very well written. Engrossing and entertaining. My only complaint it that it occasionally gets sidetracked onto a side story which is interesting but only tangentially related to the main narrative. But it's a good read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in history and/or medicine.
February 20, 2025
While this is an interesting history of discovery of one of the first antibiotics, the book has some problems. The pacing is off, the book starts of with a very long description of the first experiments that lead to the isolation of the drug, and the personal life of the involved scientists. This makes for a slow, dragging start. Besides this, from the beginning we realise that there is a big "political" elephant in the room, that this medication was developed and used in aid of World War II by German scientists. In the second half of the book the author elaborates on the role of these scientists and their experiments during the Nazi regime, and while I understand you can have respect for the intelligence and dedication of these scientists, I think it's really important to acknowledge these problems in the beginning of the story. Now it feels like the author is first glancing over this, and then defending the actions of the German scientists and their experiments. If balanced carefully, I think you can definitely tell this story with respect for the scientists, without condoning their actions.
July 5, 2018
Fascinating look into the development of the first antibiotics, with scenes from WWI battlefields, Nazi experiments, Nobel ceremonies, and lots of moments over microscopes. Surprise appearance by the early FDA, explaining how they started drug testing protocols. Must enjoy science and medicine, although it's written in layman's language. I loved it!
Full review on my blog TheBibliophage.com.
Full review on my blog TheBibliophage.com.
March 13, 2018
Interesting read on a history I knew very little about, detailing the rise of antibiotics, the pharmaceutical industry, and the FDA all in the backdrop of WW2. It also blows my mind reading about how common and quickly what we consider as minor bacterial infections like strep throat would kill people. We take a lot for granted.
August 5, 2014
I got sick while in the middle of this book, and it's a testament to the content that I kept reading despite the descriptions of people dying in various agonizing ways while my own health was questionable. It's not that graphic, but for anyone born after a certain time, after antibiotics became both commonplace and safe, it's sobering to realize how many people used to die due to secondary infections.
Gerhard Domagk, a German soldier-turned-medical-assistant in the First World War, was frustrated by seeing how many men survived surgery, only to succumb to gangrene days later. The conditions were horrid, but he did his best; "He was smart, young, and strong, he followed orders and worked hard. He earned a reputation as a reliable, steady man. And he was unusually observant." I felt like that last line was equivalent to "And the spider bit Peter" or something, the sign of a superhero's emergence. (I will note that his uncanny ability to spot four-leaf clovers, which Hager attributes to Domagk's combined observation skills and luck, is something my mom shares, so maybe she has a pending great scientific discovery!)
Despite the title, though, this is not just Domagk's story. While he goes on to become a physician, we learn about the rise of the German chemical dye industry, which eventually turns its eye toward pharmaceuticals. The connection's not as tenuous as it may seem; chemists are involved in both, and a man named Paul Ehrlich figures that in the same way some dyes hold fast to some materials better than others, it might be possible to design a chemical that would target specific bacteria.
This isn't simple or easy work; consider that "Number 418" is one of the first promising chemicals, and that's hundreds of chemicals, each painstakingly tested. Hager also does a fantastic job illustrating how a profit-motivated company has the resources and mixed motivations to discover a working drug. And with their industrial dye origins, the first solution is bound to a dye, and mysteriously only works in live animals, not in test tubes; this mystery is satisfactorily explained. In the end, sulfa, an unpatentable substance, was pinpointed as the acting agent.
And Hager doesn't stop there. The following sulfa craze leads to patentable variants, and one of them includes a solvent that, when ingested, leads to kidney failure. As deaths pile up, the FDA springs into action. It doesn't have much clout at this time -- it has to seize the toxic elixir under a technicality of mislabeling rather than because it's actually dangerous. Pharmaceutical companies have gutted any legislation that would back up governmental regulation, until the elixir panic finally pushes through a law with some bite.
There's a bit of back-and-forth through different times and places to provide proper context: the emergence of germ theory, the classification of different types of strep by an American lab assistant, the conflict between chemists and researchers and who gets the credit, childbed fever, FDR's son's illness, the hellish Nazi experiments on exactly how effective sulfa could be (you can imagine how they went about this), Hitler's refusal to allow any Germans to accept Nobel Prizes... It's actually rather coherent and added to my interest, but I can see some people getting frustrated with the side details (and I've left out a bunch).
This is not a medical thriller or a heart-quickening route to discovery, but it rewards patience and paints an eye-opening picture of not only how much things have changed in medicine, but how, and how it also could -- and did -- go wrong. I see Hager has other books; they're going on my to-read list.
Gerhard Domagk, a German soldier-turned-medical-assistant in the First World War, was frustrated by seeing how many men survived surgery, only to succumb to gangrene days later. The conditions were horrid, but he did his best; "He was smart, young, and strong, he followed orders and worked hard. He earned a reputation as a reliable, steady man. And he was unusually observant." I felt like that last line was equivalent to "And the spider bit Peter" or something, the sign of a superhero's emergence. (I will note that his uncanny ability to spot four-leaf clovers, which Hager attributes to Domagk's combined observation skills and luck, is something my mom shares, so maybe she has a pending great scientific discovery!)
Despite the title, though, this is not just Domagk's story. While he goes on to become a physician, we learn about the rise of the German chemical dye industry, which eventually turns its eye toward pharmaceuticals. The connection's not as tenuous as it may seem; chemists are involved in both, and a man named Paul Ehrlich figures that in the same way some dyes hold fast to some materials better than others, it might be possible to design a chemical that would target specific bacteria.
This isn't simple or easy work; consider that "Number 418" is one of the first promising chemicals, and that's hundreds of chemicals, each painstakingly tested. Hager also does a fantastic job illustrating how a profit-motivated company has the resources and mixed motivations to discover a working drug. And with their industrial dye origins, the first solution is bound to a dye, and mysteriously only works in live animals, not in test tubes; this mystery is satisfactorily explained. In the end, sulfa, an unpatentable substance, was pinpointed as the acting agent.
And Hager doesn't stop there. The following sulfa craze leads to patentable variants, and one of them includes a solvent that, when ingested, leads to kidney failure. As deaths pile up, the FDA springs into action. It doesn't have much clout at this time -- it has to seize the toxic elixir under a technicality of mislabeling rather than because it's actually dangerous. Pharmaceutical companies have gutted any legislation that would back up governmental regulation, until the elixir panic finally pushes through a law with some bite.
There's a bit of back-and-forth through different times and places to provide proper context: the emergence of germ theory, the classification of different types of strep by an American lab assistant, the conflict between chemists and researchers and who gets the credit, childbed fever, FDR's son's illness, the hellish Nazi experiments on exactly how effective sulfa could be (you can imagine how they went about this), Hitler's refusal to allow any Germans to accept Nobel Prizes... It's actually rather coherent and added to my interest, but I can see some people getting frustrated with the side details (and I've left out a bunch).
This is not a medical thriller or a heart-quickening route to discovery, but it rewards patience and paints an eye-opening picture of not only how much things have changed in medicine, but how, and how it also could -- and did -- go wrong. I see Hager has other books; they're going on my to-read list.
June 11, 2019
This was a very interesting history of the drug that changed medicine forever. I can’t remember where I read it, but just recently I read a brief description of its discovery. According to that author, a scientist interested only in developing dyes accidentally stumbled on one that would cure infections. This scientist’s daughter has an accident and develops an infection, then against every scientific bone in his body, he gives her the dye and voila she is healed rather to his surprise. While there was a scientist who had a daughter who was saved from at best an amputation through his invention, there is so much more to that story.
This author fills in all the missing details. He describes the helplessness of doctors and scientists in the face of every disease. He describes the horrific death tolls from infections in field hospitals and maternity wards. Then he delves into Gerhard Domagk’s decade long search for a cure. He paints a very full picture of the times and the medical research community in Europe. Really, it is the story of the beginning of the modern war on disease.
It all covers the immediate effects this drug had on the medical community, the discoverers, the public, the military, and the political scene.
I suppose if you don’t care the small details of history this book would get a little slow, but I found all those little anecdotes fascinating.
It was very discrete where necessary and I greatly appreciate that.
This author fills in all the missing details. He describes the helplessness of doctors and scientists in the face of every disease. He describes the horrific death tolls from infections in field hospitals and maternity wards. Then he delves into Gerhard Domagk’s decade long search for a cure. He paints a very full picture of the times and the medical research community in Europe. Really, it is the story of the beginning of the modern war on disease.
It all covers the immediate effects this drug had on the medical community, the discoverers, the public, the military, and the political scene.
I suppose if you don’t care the small details of history this book would get a little slow, but I found all those little anecdotes fascinating.
It was very discrete where necessary and I greatly appreciate that.
May 28, 2014
Interesting review of the history of man's knowledge (and lack thereof) of bacterial infections leading up to the discovery of the sulfa drugs in Germany in the '30s and their enormous importance in WWII. I was not aware of the essentially complete lack of regulation of drug sales in the U.S. prior to the enactment of some regulation by the FDA. You could sell anything you liked and make any claim you liked about why it was good for you!! Hard to believe in this century but true.
January 8, 2019
Absolutely loved this. The kind of book I can't stop thinking about and wanting to talk about. Close to 5 stars, but I try to reserve that rating for the very, very best so that it's more meaningful.
I'm a huge fan of this type of nonfiction (history, written almost as a novel, crossing various disciplines/topics) and this story in particular was fascinating and satisfying.
I'm a huge fan of this type of nonfiction (history, written almost as a novel, crossing various disciplines/topics) and this story in particular was fascinating and satisfying.
January 5, 2015
Tells the story of the life-altering research and development of sulfa drugs. The book is well paced for the most part, and the backdrop of early Nazi Germany adds additional interest. The book begins with the story of Gerhard Domagk, a German who survived injuries sustained in World War I to become the first doctor and researcher to achieve some success in developing an antibiotic. Coverage of the initial research dragged a little (possibly because none of the German or French researchers would listen when I repeatedly hissed, “It’s not the azo dyes!”). It picked up when Daniel Bovet, a Swiss scientist employed by the Pasteur Institute in France, found he had four extra mice to experiment with. By the time Dr. Long of Johns-Hopkins received what he initially believed to be a prank call from a colleague impersonating Eleanor Roosevelt, both the story and the use of sulfa were moving like a wildfire.
I was struck by the fact that only 75 years ago there was no awareness of the importance of hygiene in medical procedures. It was also fascinating to read about problems resulting from nonexistent standards for drug oversight, and how an errant sulfa compound finally changed this.
The book goes on to cover further uses and abuses of sulfa variants, politics, and peer competition, particularly as World War II came to an end, and the satisfaction when Domagk was finally allowed to accept his Nobel prize 8 years after it was awarded. By that time penicillin was proving to be more useful than sulfa, but as the epilogue points out (somewhat repetitively), the evolution of the first antibiotic had a profound impact on medical protocol and the health of the world population.
I was struck by the fact that only 75 years ago there was no awareness of the importance of hygiene in medical procedures. It was also fascinating to read about problems resulting from nonexistent standards for drug oversight, and how an errant sulfa compound finally changed this.
The book goes on to cover further uses and abuses of sulfa variants, politics, and peer competition, particularly as World War II came to an end, and the satisfaction when Domagk was finally allowed to accept his Nobel prize 8 years after it was awarded. By that time penicillin was proving to be more useful than sulfa, but as the epilogue points out (somewhat repetitively), the evolution of the first antibiotic had a profound impact on medical protocol and the health of the world population.
August 7, 2014
This is actually a goodread, even though it is basically a chronicle of an evolution of a drug, sulfa, its actually a whole lot more.
It goes through the history of its development, yes Nazis had a hand in it, but it saved millions of people including a one point Winston Churchill. It really took off in America when it saved the President’s son, FDR Jr.
Publicity spread about this wonder drug and to meet demands a company out of Tennessee, Massengill Co, made a liquid form in 1937. It was a concoction of Elixir Sulfanilamide adulterated with a lethal ingredient, diethylene glycol, that had the nasty side effect of killing people, more specifically killing kids then adults in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That lead to a massive hunt by the FDA to track down those who unwittingly were given the poisonous liquid. This catastrophe resulted in strengthening the FDA thru the passage of The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938" From there on out drugs had to undergo testing before being unleashed on the public.
This is just one of Many interesting stories in this book.
The narrator, Stephen Hoye, of this 12hrs and 18 min audiobook is about as animated as a stuffed bear. This book would have greatly benefited from a livelier presentation.
It goes through the history of its development, yes Nazis had a hand in it, but it saved millions of people including a one point Winston Churchill. It really took off in America when it saved the President’s son, FDR Jr.
Publicity spread about this wonder drug and to meet demands a company out of Tennessee, Massengill Co, made a liquid form in 1937. It was a concoction of Elixir Sulfanilamide adulterated with a lethal ingredient, diethylene glycol, that had the nasty side effect of killing people, more specifically killing kids then adults in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That lead to a massive hunt by the FDA to track down those who unwittingly were given the poisonous liquid. This catastrophe resulted in strengthening the FDA thru the passage of The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938" From there on out drugs had to undergo testing before being unleashed on the public.
This is just one of Many interesting stories in this book.
The narrator, Stephen Hoye, of this 12hrs and 18 min audiobook is about as animated as a stuffed bear. This book would have greatly benefited from a livelier presentation.
February 7, 2023
Sulfonamides origin story >>> Penicillin origin story
September 10, 2016
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that antibiotics changed the human condition. I had a vague idea about a penicillin eureka moment with moldy bread, but had never heard any of the story of the actual first commercially available antibiotics: sulfa drugs.
In inter-war Germany, Bayer gave nearly unlimited budget and time to a team that painstakingly tested hundreds of synthesized chemicals--each patiently constructed a molecule different than the last--against a virulent form of strep developed specifically for the tests. When they finally found one that worked, the rest of the world was highly skeptical, until doctor after doctor found themselves in a last ditch situation with deathly ill patients and managed to wheedle some Prontosil out of Bayer's labs with literally miraculous results.
I enjoyed the book's balance between the personalities and the science, and the story really is riveting. It's well-written and moves quickly, ranging from Bayer's labs to a horrifying patent medicine episode in American that killed dozens and led to the evolution of the modern FDA. Great read!
In inter-war Germany, Bayer gave nearly unlimited budget and time to a team that painstakingly tested hundreds of synthesized chemicals--each patiently constructed a molecule different than the last--against a virulent form of strep developed specifically for the tests. When they finally found one that worked, the rest of the world was highly skeptical, until doctor after doctor found themselves in a last ditch situation with deathly ill patients and managed to wheedle some Prontosil out of Bayer's labs with literally miraculous results.
I enjoyed the book's balance between the personalities and the science, and the story really is riveting. It's well-written and moves quickly, ranging from Bayer's labs to a horrifying patent medicine episode in American that killed dozens and led to the evolution of the modern FDA. Great read!
February 15, 2013
A great read about the fascinating development of the world's first antibiotic, the sulfa drug Prontosil. If you ever wished to time travel and often picture yourself at Downton Abbey, let this cure you of such romanticism. Life before antibiotics was precarious! If President Calvin Coolidge's son could DIE of a blister on his toe that he got playing tennis, nobody was safe.
Developed by the German company Bayer, Prontosil's story intersects and overlaps with Nazi Germany and WWII.
Door-to-door a thrilling read. Highly recommend.
Developed by the German company Bayer, Prontosil's story intersects and overlaps with Nazi Germany and WWII.
Door-to-door a thrilling read. Highly recommend.
June 1, 2020
Learned a lot from this one! I didn't know all that about the sulfa drugs being so important, especially in the war. This would have been good to read prior to reading Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America, but it was still a good followup. Worth reading, not difficult, and some interesting WWII period history in here.
July 19, 2021
I can't remember how I came to add this to my TRL but I have a feeling it was a recommended read on StoryGraph. It turned out to be an excellent recommendation because it was SO. GOOD.
Now I know that non-fiction science books are quite a niche genre of books to be gaga over but this book is a prime example of why you should give it a try if you've never ventured down this road before. Hager delves into the fascinating world of antibacterials, medical patents, and drug regulation laws. He gives the complete history of wartime injuries and disease from gas gangrene to gonorrhea and how the medical community was at a loss as to treatment or cure. And then the Germans began work on an industrial level to develop a 'magic bullet' that would not only cure strep and staph but a whole host of other bacterial diseases which at the time were death sentences. The truly interesting bits were about how these medicines were researched and developed in one country (with patents for their production process in the case of Germany and France) and then further expanded upon and improved in other countries (Great Britain and the United States held patents on brand names instead of processes). He also goes into patent medicines which at the time (1920-1940s) were unregulated and basically a free-for-all to anyone who wanted to make a quick buck. FASCINATING STUFF, YA'LL.
Conclusion: If you like history and most especially medical history then this book needs to be added to your list toot sweet.
Now I know that non-fiction science books are quite a niche genre of books to be gaga over but this book is a prime example of why you should give it a try if you've never ventured down this road before. Hager delves into the fascinating world of antibacterials, medical patents, and drug regulation laws. He gives the complete history of wartime injuries and disease from gas gangrene to gonorrhea and how the medical community was at a loss as to treatment or cure. And then the Germans began work on an industrial level to develop a 'magic bullet' that would not only cure strep and staph but a whole host of other bacterial diseases which at the time were death sentences. The truly interesting bits were about how these medicines were researched and developed in one country (with patents for their production process in the case of Germany and France) and then further expanded upon and improved in other countries (Great Britain and the United States held patents on brand names instead of processes). He also goes into patent medicines which at the time (1920-1940s) were unregulated and basically a free-for-all to anyone who wanted to make a quick buck. FASCINATING STUFF, YA'LL.
Conclusion: If you like history and most especially medical history then this book needs to be added to your list toot sweet.
May 19, 2020
One of the best non-fiction science books I’ve heard or read. The book also stands on its own as an Audible book vs. print version. There are no charts, graphs or tables. Hoye is the perfect narrator.
Thomas Hager is a an excellent story teller, covering the discovery of antibiotics, made possible by the invention of the microscope, bringing the invisibly small to view. Hager takes us from there to one of the best non-fiction science books I’ve heard or read. The book also stands on its own as an Audible book vs. print version. There are no charts, graphs or tables.
Thomas Hager is a an excellent story teller, covering the discovery of antibiotics made possible by the invention of the microscope, bringing invisibly small bacteria to view, to the development of antibiotics. It’s an amazing story!
I highly recommend this book.
Thomas Hager is a an excellent story teller, covering the discovery of antibiotics, made possible by the invention of the microscope, bringing the invisibly small to view. Hager takes us from there to one of the best non-fiction science books I’ve heard or read. The book also stands on its own as an Audible book vs. print version. There are no charts, graphs or tables.
Thomas Hager is a an excellent story teller, covering the discovery of antibiotics made possible by the invention of the microscope, bringing invisibly small bacteria to view, to the development of antibiotics. It’s an amazing story!
I highly recommend this book.
January 1, 2023
I didn’t finish this book; not because it wasn’t interesting, but because the author had such an irritating tendency to go on unimportant tangents that didn’t move the story forward, truthfully. I also had to read this book for school which lowered the appeal a lot.
April 14, 2017
Discovered almost accidentally by German scientists, the Sulfa class of antibiotics was one of the first modern (and effective) means of combating the ills that plagued mankind for eons prior to its arrival. In a Bayer laboratory, a team of chemists and researchers, more suited to continuing to pump out the dyes that made its company a landmark chemical company, than to creating a miracle cure, happened upon Sulfaprim. Those old enough to remember have my astonishment for living through such a wonderful time, and this tome is written well-enough to capture most of that former age's glory.
One aspect of this book that I really loved was how the author began to relate stories that were seeminly unrelated, only to tie them in what would then become an "only natural" conclusion.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in microbiology, the history of medicine, or even those who like a sidestory to the trials and tribulation of the WWII era.
One aspect of this book that I really loved was how the author began to relate stories that were seeminly unrelated, only to tie them in what would then become an "only natural" conclusion.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in microbiology, the history of medicine, or even those who like a sidestory to the trials and tribulation of the WWII era.
June 25, 2020
I picked up this book to procrastinate from writing my PhD dissertation on antimicrobial chemistry, justifying to myself that it sort of qualified as background research. Everyone has heard the story of Penicillin's discovery, but much of the information presented here was new even to me despite working in the field.
The discovery of Sulfa's antibacterial properties largely changed the opinions of the public regarding science-based medicine and also played a big part in creating government-regulation of medicines, saving hundreds of thousands of live (if not more) and eliminating unimaginable amounts of suffering. Who can say how long it may have taken society to accept these concepts under different circumstances.
The author also does an excellent job of accurately portraying the hair-pulling frustrations involved with medicinal chemistry/drug design, which sadly have really not progressed all that far over the past century.
The discovery of Sulfa's antibacterial properties largely changed the opinions of the public regarding science-based medicine and also played a big part in creating government-regulation of medicines, saving hundreds of thousands of live (if not more) and eliminating unimaginable amounts of suffering. Who can say how long it may have taken society to accept these concepts under different circumstances.
The author also does an excellent job of accurately portraying the hair-pulling frustrations involved with medicinal chemistry/drug design, which sadly have really not progressed all that far over the past century.
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