Word: wonder
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
...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 for human use, it might have been shelved. Then animal tests...
...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...
...Australia down to six in Siam. In most places where consumption is low, it is because the price is high. In Spain, for instance, when raw sugar was selling for 4.2? a lb., refined sugar cost 29? retail (v. a U.S. price of 9.5?). Asks Lamborn: "Is it any wonder that Spain's per capita consumption of sugar continues low-a mere...
...father was a kind, reserved Anglican bishop. His mother, when her death approached, welcomed it with a remarkable phrase: "You don't know what a comfort it is to think that I am never going to be shy again." With two such restrained parents, it is no wonder that "Hughie" developed an insatiable appetite for romance and popular approval, and that he spent much of his life searching for the "ideal friend"-one over whom he could pour buckets of love and "understanding...