Author: John E. Lesch
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: drugs, medicine, transformed, sulfa, first, miracle
Number of Pages: 376
Published: 2006-10-12
List price: $29.95
ISBN-10: 019518775X
ISBN-13: 9780195187755

In the decade from 1935-1945, while the Second World War raged in Europe, a new class of medicines capable of controlling bacterial infections launched a therapeutic revolution that continues today. The new medicines were not penicillin and antibiotics, but sulfonamides, or sulfa drugs. The sulfa drugs preceded penicillin by almost a decade, and during World War II they carried the main therapeutic burden in both military and civilian medicine. Their success stimulated a rapid expansion of research and production in the international pharmaceutical industry, raised expectations of medicine, an