Category: History

The phrase 'owl drugs' can refer to several different things across various fields, including historical pharmacy, modern medical screening, and veterinary medicine. Originating primarily from a prominent 19th-century American drugstore chain, the term has evolved to encompass a number of distinct and often unrelated concepts within the world of pharmacology and healthcare.

In 1986, Contac, a popular cold medication, was pulled from store shelves following a product tampering scare. But this was not the only safety issue to change the product; the far more permanent answer to **what happened to Contac medicine** lies in a later FDA ban on a key ingredient.

Before antibiotics revolutionized medicine, a minor cut or a common infection like pneumonia could easily be fatal. What did humans do before antibiotics to combat illness? The answer lies in a combination of folk wisdom, herbal remedies, and medical practices that, in retrospect, were a mix of the helpful and the outright dangerous.

In 1966, the Rolling Stones' song "Mother's Little Helper" brought public attention to the use of tranquilizers by women, revealing that the serene image of the 1950s housewife was often maintained with pharmacological assistance. The song underscored a complex social and medical history, exploring what drugs did housewives used to take to cope with the pressures of domestic life.

During World War II, a range of sedatives and hypnotics were utilized, with barbiturates being the most prominent class of sleeping pills employed by both military and civilian populations. Their use was widespread, especially for treating war-related trauma like 'battle fatigue,' now known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

For over 3,500 years, the medicinal properties of willow bark were utilized by ancient civilizations like the Sumerians and Egyptians, making its modern descendant, aspirin, a candidate for what is the oldest drug still used today. This remarkable pharmaceutical journey demonstrates the evolution of medicine from herbal remedies to synthetic compounds.

In 1875, the city of San Francisco passed the first anti-drug law in the United States, targeting opium dens and primarily affecting Chinese immigrant communities. The complex history of what was the first drug to become illegal reveals that opium was the initial substance criminalized, driven by a combination of public health concerns, moral panic, and racial animosity.