From Aspirin to Viagra - Stories of the Drugs that Changed the World

From Aspirin to Viagra, insulin to penicillin, and vaccines to vitamin supplements, drugs have become part of our everyday lives. This staggering global industry wasn't born overnight; advancements in pharmaceutical science have been happening for a long while, over the course of decades and even centuries.
This book tells the history of ten prominent substances and how they came to be common household names. It shows how the creation of such influential drugs often began with the right person at the exactly right-or wrong!- time. The chapters tell the stories of geniuses and charlatans; scholars and amateurs; advances won through hard work or pure luck; and ultimately, the handful of resounding successes that revolutionized a global industry.
Beyond the pioneers of the most famous drugs in our culture, the book analyzes how our perspective on medical treatment has shifted over the decades. Modern standards for testing and administering substances have created a new set of advantages, setbacks, and stigmas, all of which are discussed herein. 

List of contents

Acknowledgements
 
Dedication
 
About the Author
 
Preface
 
1. Aspirin
          Story 1.1: The curious reverend and the bark of the willow
          Story 1.2: The three fathers and the two miracle drugs
          Story 1.3: The industrialist and his business
          Story 1.4: The great German patriot and the Great Phenol Plot
          Story 1.5: The man from New Zealand and marketing magic
          Story 1.6: The country doctor and medicinal gum
          Concluding remarks
 
2. Quinine
          Story 2.1: The Countess of Chinchón and the Jesuit Bark
          Story 2.2: The successful charlatan and the miracle medicine
          Story 2.3: The two friends and the yellow cinchona
          Story 2.4: The unlucky adventurer and the alpacas
          Story 2.5: The two opposing scientists and the mosquitoes with spotted wings
          Concluding remarks
         
3. Vitamin C
          Story 3.1: The famous admiral and scurvy
          Story 3.2: The ship's doctor and Murphy's Law
          Story 3.3: The snob and the 7,000 cannons
          Story 3.4: The Norwegian hygienist and guinea pigs
          Story 3.5: The Hungarian politician and Hungarian paprika
          Story 3.6: The hardworking chemist and the role of wine flies
          Concluding remarks
           
4. Insulin
          Story 4.1: The bold experimenter and sweet urine
          Story 4.2: The military doctor in Barbados and various diets
          Story 4.3: Two diabetologists, starvation, and Elizabeth the Iconic
          Story 4.4: The vivid scientist from Mauritius and the elixir of youth
          Story 4.5: The aspiring amateur and the elixir of life
          Story 4.6: The strong-minded scientist and her four hands
          Concluding remarks
           
5. Penicillin
          Story 5.1: The doctor with stained hands and the magic bullet
          Story 5.2: The rejected Nobel Prize and saving young Hildegard
          Story 5.3:The Scottish bacteriologist and his return from vacation
          Story 5.4: Three Englishmen and the benefits of America
          Story 5.5: Stubborn Andy and the need for meat
          Story 5.6: The renowned health professional and ethical blindness
          Concluding remarks
 
6. The Pill
          Story 6.1: Madame Restell and Fifth Avenue abortions
          Story 6.2: The revolutionary and birth control
          Story 6.3: The controversial biologist and his controversial experiments
          Story 6.4: The Catholic gynecologist and his futile hope
          Story 6.5: The three brilliant chemists
          Concluding remarks
 
7. Chlorpromazine
          Story 7.1: The enlightened doctor and freeing the insane
          Story 7.2: Many attempts and difficult beginnings for treatment
          Story 7.3: A French thinker and his lytic cocktail
          Story 7.4: A professor, his assistant, and psychiatric penicillin
          Story 7.5: Psychoanalysis and the need to know foreign languages
          Concludingremarks
 
8. Prozac
          Story 8.1: Two psychiatrists, a singing cyclist and dancing patients
          Story 8.2: Three chemists and three neurotransmitters
          Story 8.3: The role of the medicine box
          Story 8.4: How we forgot to grieve
          Concluding remarks
 
9. Viagra
          Story 9.1: The autodidact of Delft and the penis's status in history
          Story 9.2: The son of a Russian vodka maker and elixirs of youth
          Story 9.3: The biggest charlatan and the deepest desires of men
          Story 9.4: A urologist drops his pants and what men are willing to endure
          Story 9.5: The big medicine producer and the farmer's beautiful daughter
          Concluding remarks
 
10. Vaccines
          Story 10.1: A beautiful aristocrat and the Ottoman method
          Story 10.2: A wise farmer, a famous doctor and how vaccination got its name
          Story 10.3: A sick slave and the chain transfer of vaccines across the Atlantic
          Story 10.4: Two greats and only one Nobel Prize
          Story 10.5: "Sir Almost Wright" and military brains
          Story 10.6: The Righteous Among the Nations and lice feeders
          Story 10.7: The Somali cook and a huge victory
          Story 10.8: A gastroenterologist and one of the worst hoaxes in medicine
          Concluding remarks
 
11. Conclusion
         
Selected Bibliography
           
Index

About the author

Vladimir Marko was born in 1952 in Košice, Eastern Slovakia. He studied organic chemistry at Slovak Technical University and biochemistry at Comenius University, both in Bratislava. He finished his university studies in 1975 and PhD. studies in 1980.
From 1980 to 1991, Marko worked as a researcher in the Institute of Experimental Pharmacology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. As a member of the Department of Pharmacokinetics, he was responsible for the determination of drugs in biological fluids. In that time, he published several scientific articles and was also an editor of a book dealing with drug determinations (Determination of Beta-Blockers in Biological Material, Elsevier Science Publishers, 1989).
In 1994, Marko began working for the Danish-based pharmacological company Lundbeck, first as a representative and later as the managing director for Slovakia. After nearly 20 years there, he retired in 2013.

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Product details

• Authors: Vladimir Marko
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2020
• EAN: 9783030442859
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3044285-9
• No. of pages: 276
• Dimensions: 175 mm x 17 mm x 241 mm
• Weight: 488 g
• Illustrations: XII, 276 p. 3 illus.
• Series: Springer Praxis Books; Popular Science
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General; Non-fiction book > Dictionaries, reference works