The Demon Under the Microscope
From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazis Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
by Thomas Hager · first published 2006
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…by Thomas Hager is a very enlightening book on this very same issue during the late 1800s. EDIT: I was mobile earlier but wanted to throw a bit of a teaser in here. This book (along with Hager's "The Demon Under the Microscope) are excellent reads and I high recommend them. Essentially, there were many "doomsday scenarios" wherein the context of the late 1800s was that vast supplies of natural fertilizer were used up and people…
on “Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues” ↗…development of the sulfa drugs is pretty eye-opening, and is well-told in this popsci history book by Thomas Hager (2006), which also covers this toxic poisoning episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon_Under_the_Microscope One fascinating aspect of this is that Bayer originally tried to convince the world that their patented derivative of sulfonamide, Prontosil (note nitrogenous ring additive) was the one that worked.…
on “Elixir Sulfanilamide” ↗Thomas Hager wrote that book along with “The Demon under the Microscope”. Excellent works.
on “Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World” ↗1. The Demon Under the Microscope... (T.Hager) 2. The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Heinlein) 3. Masters of Doom... (D.Kushner) 4. Paycheck (P.Dick) 5. Dealers of Lightning (M.Hiltzik)
on “Ask HN: What were your top 5 reads of 2018?” ↗From "The Demon Under the Microscope" by Hager--an interesting read on the history of Sulfonamides (the drug that kicks off the "golden age of antibiotics on the chart)--usage was entirely uncontrolled and people did not complete drug regimes.…
on “Why do antibiotics exist?” ↗Huh, I did not know they were related to sulfonamides like that. If you (or someone else) might like a book that goes into the history of sulfonamides, I'd recommend "The Demon Under The Microscope" by Hager (https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Under-Microscope-Battlefield-Ho...). It was an interesting read.
on “DARPA Seeks to Shield Blood from Fungal and Bacterial Pathogens” ↗…compound in the hope that the activity of the public domain substance was preserved and market that instead (see the Prontosil/sulfanilimide story of the 1930s, well-related in Thomas Hager's 2006 book "The Demon Under The Microscope). I suppose the user of these tools could restrict them to in-patent compounds, but that's ludicrously anti-scientific in outlook. In general it seems the more constraints are applied, the worse the…
on “Robin: A multi-agent system for automating scientific discovery” ↗…for a counter-example: Bayer delayed their widespread release even after they had concluded they were effective and patented them because they wanted to make sure their patent was valid (source: "The Demon Under the Microscope", by Hager.) Bayer had spent a lot of time and money developing the drugs and wanted to make sure they got a return. (Ironically, it was quickly realized that the patented sulfa drugs were in fact a combination…
on “Half of taxpayer funded research will soon be available to the public” ↗