5 Drugs That Changed the World

In the late 1700s, English chemist Joseph Priestley [made a gas](https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/mim/environmental/html/n2o.htm) he called “phlogisticated nitrous air” (nitrous oxide). English chemist Humphry Davy thought it could be used as pain relief in surgery, but instead it became a [recreational drug](https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajplung.00206.2014).)

It wasn’t until 1834 that we reached another milestone. That’s when French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas named a new gas [chloroform](https://www.worldofmolecules.com/solvents/chloroform-molecule.html). Scottish doctor James Young Simpson used it in 1847 [to assist a birth](http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/fn.86.3.F207).)

What happened in 1928 to Scottish physician Alexander Fleming is one of the classic stories of accidental drug discovery.)

Fleming went on holiday, leaving some cultures of the bacterium streptococcus on his laboratory bench. When he came back, he saw some airborne penicillium (a fungal contaminant) had [stopped the streptococcus](https://academic.oup.com/jimb/article/36/6/775/5993612) from growing.)

Australian pathologist Howard Florey and his team stabilised penicillin and [carried out the first human experiments](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1945/florey/biographical/). With American financing, penicillin was mass-produced and changed the course of World War II. It was used to treat [thousands of service personnel](https://news.wisc.edu/d-day-invasion-was-bolstered-by-uw-madison-penicillin-project/).)

Nitroglycerin was invented in 1847 and displaced gunpowder as the most powerful explosive in the world. It was also the first modern drug to treat [angina](https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/heart-conditions-angina), the chest pain associated with heart disease.)

in 1960, a birth-control pill, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago was approved by the FDA. Before that, clinical trials ran in Puerto Rico, where poor women were given high doses of the drug without disclosure that it was in trial or of possible side effects.)