Plane trip #2 made short by

The Demon Under the Microscope

From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search foo the World's First Miracle Drug

by Thomas Hager

Superb!  At its narrowest, one man's search for a cure for gas gangrene, a bacterial infection that would appear several days after a wound was closed.  Prior to the invention of sulfa drugs, almost all bacterial infections had but two treatments--wait, and hope. 

But at it's broadest--and this is a far-reaching work--it's the story of the invention of modern antibiotics and how they changed the world forever.

Chemistry, biology, personalities and politics.  The creation of a factory line approach to drug research that left nothing to chance, plus the rare accidents that uncovered (or obscured) anomalies in the results--anomalies that might end up being the whole point of the research. You find yourself rooting for the Germans, Gerhard Domagk in particular since his story is the center of it all, and can't help feeling a little heartbroken when his team overlooked the results from molecule Kl-821.  This test molecule consisted of sufanaliamide linked to a simple carbon/nitrogen string instead of an azo dye, and it had better results on strep than the dye-based compounds.  There are indications in Domagk's lab books that he recognized the effect.

But the whole point of the research was to find the best dye-based compound, so these results were ignored.  Whether he was inadvertently sidetracked or whether the Bayer management refused to allow further development on a cheap, unpatentable bulk chemical, is not known.  For whatever reason, Bayer continued development on the dye-based products and left discovery of the simpler solution to the French.  Which is still another story, just as fascinating as the first--and it's all here.

Thomas Hager is a genius and a nobel-prize worthy researcher.  And he has another book, and it's at the library!  I'm heading out now.