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Title: The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
ISBN: 1400082137
Author:
Thomas Hager
Publicate Date: 2006-09-19
Publish: 2006-09-19
List Price: $24.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $5.67
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.98
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.47
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Review for "Demon under The Microscope"
A fascinating history of the discovery of the sulfa drugs. A bit of chemistry or science background makes the book all the more interesting.
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2: Fascinating
Very informative. An easy read. Once I started, I couldn't stop. Definitely an item to be in any medical history collection.
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3: The Story of the Sulfa Drugs
Within the first fifty pages this book took it's place in my top ten non-fiction works. It includes history, science, biography and business wrapped together in a fast-paced and clear manner. It's a shock to see some of the often fatal diseases our grandparents faced that today have been all but forgotten. A world where a boil, insect bite, or cut finger could result in an ugly death. The author states that this is a book about "antibiotics," he includes the sulfa drugs to be part of this class, rather than just the traditional antibiotics derived from molds. With his description the author is being a bit disingenuous, I suspect to help market his book. The book is about the sulfa drugs which were the first effective and industrially manufactured family of drugs. This entire class of drugs have been all but forgotten. The details of the discovery and use of traditional "antibiotics" is well documented. I personally might have skipped a book subtitled "The Story of the Sulfa Drugs". I am very happy to have been slightly mislead and directed to this excellent history.
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4: Sulfanilamide is still on the American market
It's not mentioned in the book, but it is marketed as AVC Cream, most commonly placed on gauze and packed into the [...] after hysterectomy. Other dosage forms are long obsolete, but this one is still in use and probably always will be.
We hear all the time about antibiotic resistance, but most of us don't even think about what life was like before the drugs even existed. This is why home births really were safer prior to World War II, due to all the germs floating around in hospitals and NOTHING that could be done if infection struck. People, especially children like Hildegard Domagk, died from diseases we hardly bat an eye at now, and the drug got the ball rolling. I'm guessing we don't hear about it like we do with penicillin because it's not in general use any more.
This book is mostly the history of sulfanilamide, the first really effective systemic antibacterial drug. The drug had some really weird side effects, so it probably wouldn't be considered safe by modern standards. It also addresses political and business issues surrounding the drug and is a mini-bio of its discoverer, Dr. Gerhard Domagk. Who's Hildegard? His daughter, who got a deadly infection after being poked with a needle and was one of the first people who life was saved by this drug. Last I heard, she was still living and would be in her late 70s.
I purchased the book because of the chapter on the Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster of 1937, a very dark chapter in American medical history that has largely been forgotten to the point where I have never conversed with a fellow pharmacist who has ever heard of it. We associate the Massengill corporation with douches (LOL) but yes, that's who made it, and no, nobody tested the concoction to see if it was safe for human consumption before sending it out on the market, where it could be sold without a prescription. Sulfanilamide does not dissolve readily in alcohol or water, but it does dissolve in diethylene glycol (antifreeze) so that's what was used, causing the deaths of 107 of the 353 people known to have taken it. The History Channel did a program on this a few years ago called "Elixir of Death"; the author who was working on a book of this title who was prominently featured in the program died in a car accident shortly before it aired in 2003.
I also had the privilege of seeing Thomas Hager read from his book on C-Span II's Book TV. This was quite interesting to hear perspectives straight from the author.
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5: Great read
What a wonderful sweep through a seemingly simple but world changing set of discoveries. How scary the world was before antibiotics! How much the discovery detailed in this book not only changed the world of pharmacy, it impacted who becomes an M.D. and how they do their job, and so one. I highly recommend this book.
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