The antibiotic before penicillin

Most of us think that penicillin was the first antibiotic, but Ashutosh gives us the story of sulfa which ushered in the “first herioc age age of antibiotics”. The post is actually a review of “The Demon Under the Microscope” a book by Thomas Hager which hopes to popularize this forgotten but extremely important story.

But at the time, there were almost no laws that required manufacturers to list such petty things as solvents on their bottles. The FDA was a skimpy and ineffectual agency at the time, with a few dozen agents scuttling around to mainly keep a check on excessive profit making. After the sulfa-ethylene glycol concoction was sold, a wave of death began that did not stop until several hundred people died, and public outrage changed the face of the FDA- and the way in which drugs are developed, manufactured and sold in the US- forever. After the tragedy, the FDA acquired new powers that it could have only dreamt of before. Of course, it took the thalidomide tragedy to have the kind of strict FDA regime that we have today, but the sulfa tragedy started it all, and made drugs substantially safer for the public.

Its an interesting article full of little interesting factoids. Long but worth reading.
Link.