The answer, discovered in 1932, turned out to be sulfa drugs, the precursors to modern antibiotics. Farben) worked feverishly to identify which microscopic squiggles might render humankind forever safe from malaria and tuberculosis. Gerhard Domagk and his colleagues at Bayer (a subsidiary of I.G. Not coincidentally, the search for anything that would significantly diminish the deadly power of disease largely occurred between the world wars, mostly in Germany. Modern bacteriology was born on the battlefields of WWI, where bacteria-rich trenches added to the toll of millions of soldiers killed. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue of a great suspense novel. 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.Ī 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. 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. 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. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. (Sept.In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of sulfa, the first antibiotic and the drug that shaped modern medicine. This yarn prefigures the modern rush for corporate pharma patents it is testament to Hager's skill that the inherently unsexy process of finding the chemicals that might help conquer strep is as exciting as an account of the hunt for a Russian submarine. He knows that lay readers need plenty of personality and local color, and his story is rich with both. Hager, a biographer of Linus Pauling, does a remarkable job of transforming material fit for a biology graduate seminar into highly entertaining reading.

Demon under the microscope