Word: drugged
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Back from Mephistopheles. To a large extent, this revolution was brought about by the big drug manufacturers who pour out the wonder drugs from their assembly-line factories, translating the discoveries of the laboratory into jars on the druggists' shelves. Only a generation ago, the drug industry was barely tolerated by "pure" researchers in science and medicine, who were apt to consider it as undesirable an employer as Mephistopheles. Now that attitude has completely changed. For their part, as the essential middlemen of the medical revolution, the drugmakers have accepted the fact that they are in business for other...
...time had come for expansion. Merck & Co. concluded that the way for the U.S. drug industry to expand was through all-out research. It was a proud day for Merck in 1933 when the company's new and enlarged labs (part for pure research, part for applied) were dedicated. It was the right time for labs. Research chemists were already opening four new medical frontiers, and Merck has been among the first to cross all of them...
Sulfas. By the time the vitamin frontier was thickly settled, another frontier was being opened. In 1935 the French broke the secret of a new German drug and published it: a simple substance derived from coal tar would kill the streptococcus germs that often caused fatal infections. The drug was Prontosil; from it came sulfanilamide, first of the modern "wonder drugs" and first of a long line of sulfas. Other companies were the first to find high-powered, patentable variants like sulfamerazine, sulfadiazine, sulfathiazole and sulfaguanidine. Merck chemists got what looked like a dud: sul-faquinoxaline. Never proved safe...
Antibiotics. After the sulfas came the antibiotics. No drug was ever launched with more drama than the first and greatest of these-penicillin. As the story is usually told in the drug trade, Merck & Co. missed out on penicillin in the early stages because it concentrated too hard on trying to find a way to synthesize it and got left behind. George Merck explains it differently: "The Government asked us to put up a plant, but insisted that Merck apply for Government money to finance it. I said 'No, that would make it look as if we were lobbying...
...public, tirelessly hoping for a panacea, suffers an emotional letdown as each new wonder drug in turn proves to have its limitations. Cortisone, which was hailed at first (by laymen) as the cure for arthritis, is the latest exciting disappointment. Since the first chorus of enthusiasm, doctors have learned to handle cortisone warily. It cannot be given to any patients for more than a few weeks or months without the risk of causing other disorders. It will be years before the medical profession knows just how cortisone can best be used. But Merckmen know that cortisone, like its predecessors...