My thoughts on:
The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
by Thomas Hager
Delicious cluster: http://www.delicious.com/mbgmbg/demon0mg
A riveting history of antibiotics. Some things that stick:
Prontosil (a red tablet) was first synthesized by "Bayer chemists Josef Klarer and Fritz Mietzsch, was tested and found effective against some important bacterial infections in mice by Gerhard Domagk, who subsequently received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Medicine. " (Whole process managed by Hörlein.) Then "Trefouel and... team at the French Pasteur Institute found" that the active part of prontosil was a sulfur moiety. Prontosil didn't work in vitro as the active sulfur group needed to be cleaved off. A prontosil derivative was brought to the US by Long & Bliss of JHU and aided treatment of FDR's son.
Sulfa drugs "use introduced and substantiated the concept of metabolic antagonism. Sulfonamides, as antimetabolites, compete with para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) for incorporation into folic acid."
Industrialization of production at Leverkusen by Carl Duisberg.
Creation of the FDA in the US in 1930s following drug administration disaster.
MyID: demon0mg (email + delicious)
