Tag: History

In 1944, penicillin was made widely available to treat bacterial infections, changing the course of medicine forever. Its revolutionary effectiveness in saving millions of lives against once-fatal diseases earned it the title, "**Which drug is known as the wonder drug?**", marking the dawn of the antibiotic era.

Approximately 2,000 years ago, the highly-valued silphium plant vanished from the wild, making it one of the first recorded instances of human-induced extinction. Therefore, understanding the use of a 'Silphium tablet' requires an exploration of ancient history rather than modern pharmacology.

While historically arsenic was famously nicknamed the "king of poisons" for its insidious use in assassinations, modern toxicology reveals a different answer for **what is the king of all poisons?** The title for the most potent known substance by weight now belongs to a bacterial neurotoxin called botulinum.

Doxycycline is a venerable antibiotic first described in 1958 by researchers at Pfizer. It belongs to the tetracycline class of drugs, which trace their roots back to the late 1940s with discoveries made from soil-dwelling bacteria. The journey of doxycycline illustrates the evolution of semisynthetic antibiotics, transforming a natural product into a more effective and versatile therapeutic agent.

Originally derived from the *Strychnos nux-vomica* tree, strychnine was historically employed for a variety of purposes before its extreme toxicity was fully understood. Exploring what was strychnine used for reveals a startling and cautionary tale in the annals of pharmacology and toxicology.