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The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
by
Thomas Hager (Goodreads Author),
Stephen Hoye
Fast-paced, suspenseful, and utterly satisfying, The Demon Under the Microscope is a sweeping history of the discovery of the first antibiotic and its dramatic effect on the world of medicine and beyond.The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery...more
Audio CD, 352 pages
Published
November 16th 2006
by Tantor Media Inc
(first published 2006)
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Tyler
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review of another edition
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The story of sulfa drugs makes for good reading, but the author’s fascination with the scientist behind their discovery turns this book into an un-asked-for defense of the German people’s conduct during the Nazi era. The author’s story is uneven, so I’ll go from the bad to the good.
Hager’s book could have been thirty or forty pages shorter. He takes too long describing the experiments leading to the isolation of a sulfa drug by Dr. Gerhard Domagk, who one day would win a Nobel priz...more
Hager’s book could have been thirty or forty pages shorter. He takes too long describing the experiments leading to the isolation of a sulfa drug by Dr. Gerhard Domagk, who one day would win a Nobel priz...more
It's sometimes surprising, when you look back into history, how often people died from disease. Even during wars, more were usually killed by illness and infection than in battle. I've looked into my own family history and it's not uncommon to find ancestors who died young by today's standards, or whose families could have been much larger if not for the children who died soon after birth (and mothers as well) or while still young. Today, we take it for granted that medicines and doctors can cur...more
I found this to be a very interesting subject matter. The "world's first miracle drug" turns out to be sulfa. I should have known this but I was expecting it to be antibiotics (such as penicillin) when I first bought this book at Atticus. Amazing that sulfa was discovered at all. Quite random, but that is the history of many an amazing discovery! The author sets the stage nicely by showing the great need to fight infection and the related struggles in relative recent history. Rather...more
I've always wondered what "Sulfa" was. I had tried a few times to find out via internet searches, but my google-foo isn't very good, and I had been mistakenly spelling it "Sulfur" not realizing the proper spelling (I had only ever heard the word spoken on TV or in movies, never actually read it). So when I saw that this book was all about it's history, I snatched it up and finished it in a few days.
It was a very good read. I always find it amazing how books like ...more
It was a very good read. I always find it amazing how books like ...more
In World War I, more men died of infection than combat. By World War II, soldiers seldom died from strep infection. The difference was the development of sulfa drugs. This is the story of their discovery by a team led by Gerhard Domagk of Bayer laboratories, their development by Almroth Wright's group in Britain and Ernest Fourneau’s at the Pasteur Institute in France, and their abuse by patent medicine quacks in the U.S. Extremely well researched and written, the book reads like a suspense n...more
I read this after reading The Alchemy of Air, also by Thomas Hager. Though both TAoA and this book are thoroughly researched and shed light on very important, and often undervalued, scientific issues, TDUtM distinctly feels stitched together, so much so as to seem forced at times. The book's description is deliberately compelling, and in many ways, the theme of the story is very much deservedly so. However, Hager seems to lose steam at certain parts of the book, filling pages with anecdotes t...more
Let me start by saying the title of this book is incredibly misleading. This is not one doctor's discovery of sulfa drugs, the first antibiotic, it is the story of the discovery of sulfa drugs and their effectiveness which took years and many people in labs throughout several countries. The focus for much of the book is on Gerhard Domagk, but there were dozens instrumental to its discovery, development, and marketing; not to mention those who paved the way for the research.
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The title isn't very clear, but this book is about the story of sulfa, the first antibiotic that was discovered. Not only does the book talk about how scientists discovered sulfa, but the book also talks about how it influenced the way that drugs are regulated, the nature of pharmaceutical companies, and the way that doctors work. There were some short comments in the book that made me feel that the author did know what it's like to work in the laboratory, and that made me appreciate the book.
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Warnie B.
rated it
It took me a long time to get used to this narrator; he sounded a lot like Garrison Keillor, who I can't stand--you know how Keillor draws all his words out like he's reading poetry or something? That's what this guy was doing, only what he was reading about was blood and guts. It just didn't fit. However, by the end of the book either I'd learned to ignore it or he'd stopped doing it quite so badly.
The book itself was pretty interesting, only it was organized a little oddly in parts...more
The book itself was pretty interesting, only it was organized a little oddly in parts...more
I definitely enjoyed it. The first part of the book kind of confused me -- not the material but what he was doing with it. As I continued listening, though, the different threads pulled together and it all made sense. Luckily I had a long drive for listening - I think several hours on continuous listening helped.
Fascinating subject. Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin is a familiar story, the discovery of sulfa much less so.
The narration was fine -- not...more
Fascinating subject. Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin is a familiar story, the discovery of sulfa much less so.
The narration was fine -- not...more
I enjoyed this book immensely. It is so easy to forget how recently and radically medical care has matured into the ability to treat and cure rather than diagnose, commiserate and bury. It also reviews the development of the pharmaceutical giants, yes they make gobs of money, but they throw fortunes at product development. Also the development of clinical testing, and drug approvals. Here we see yet again the great pendulum swing from too little regulation, to too much regulation, and back a...more
In their zeal to promote a book, publishers have a tendency to sensationalize and exaggerate. Sometimes, they just do not get the facts correct. The publisher summary of Demon Under the Microscope begins with “The Nazis discovered it.” The Nazis did not discover sulfa drugs nor did the Allies win the war with it. My god, the summary writer must not have even read this book because it does not communicate that at all. A German scientist and his team discovered sulfa drugs and not all Germans wer...more
I don't read non-fiction often but ocassionally something will catch my attention. This book did just that: the story of the world's first antibiotic and the transition from a culture where routine infections killed to the current era of the uber drugs.
Sulfa is a name most people are unfamiliar with and its story has been largely forgotten and untold. Before Penicillin, before Amoxicillin or the myriad other antibiotics sold today, there was Sulfa. Unregulated, over-used and derived...more
Sulfa is a name most people are unfamiliar with and its story has been largely forgotten and untold. Before Penicillin, before Amoxicillin or the myriad other antibiotics sold today, there was Sulfa. Unregulated, over-used and derived...more
Hager's book is a modern-day Microbe Hunters. It tells the story of the German physician Gerhard Domagk and his "discovery" of sulfa and its uses as an antibiotic. The book reads like a fiction thriller.
"By 1956, just twenty years after Prontosil first became widely available, 90 percent of physicians' prescriptions were written for drugs that did not exist commercially before 1938. Over the same time period, the death rate from childhood diseases dropped more than 90 ...more
"By 1956, just twenty years after Prontosil first became widely available, 90 percent of physicians' prescriptions were written for drugs that did not exist commercially before 1938. Over the same time period, the death rate from childhood diseases dropped more than 90 ...more
You'd think the story of the discovery of sulfa would be short, simple, and maybe not too interesting. Wrong on all counts. Hager rings in a huge cast of colorful characters and events against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century: the politics, the personality clashes, the rise of the Nazis, the genesis of the big chemical/pharmaceutical companies in Europe and America, and a decent amount of good science made palatable. Fascinating book.
Battlefield hospitals and nazi labs are attention getters, but most of the book is about scientists (and not just one) slogging along arranging and rearranging various atoms trying to get this stuff to work. And then missing the breakthrough moment. Although the blubs make it sound like sulfa only lasted as the drug of choice for a decade after its "discovery" in 1931, I remember taking sulfa drugs for sore throats and ear infections through the 1950s.
This was the textbook for my friends' chemistry class she taught at Princeton last spring. I was not excited to read it for our book group, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find I really enjoyed it. The writer did a great job of keeping the interesting facts flowing, and had a very readable style. I could actually find myself interested in what happened on the 617th experiment, and what happened to the people involved in the research.
I really loved this book. Hager had me interested from the first page. I am not that well informed on scientific things, and I was a little worried when I started that I wouldn't understand anything, but he just has a way of explaining things because I got what he was saying. The stories he uses to tell the history of the sulfa drugs were so crazy and I am so glad that there have been leaps and bounds in medical science and regulations. So great!
(CD version) Not sure if I would've remained with it as long if I had started the actual book (versus listening to the CD) but a very interesting history of sulfa drugs from a dedicated Bayer (pronounced Buy-er in Deutsch) scientist. Incredible to think of today's common infections were often life-threatening and that the drugs were used during a brief period, 1935-45, before the discovery of antibiotics.
Pancha
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who liked Ghost Map, books about diseases
"This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement of a great suspense novel." --from Demon Under the Microscope front flap.
This might seem like ad copy hyperbole, but this book is in fact an excellent, exciting tale of scientific suspense. On many occasions, the lives of the very doctor's studying to find the perfect antibiotic hung in the balance. The discovery of sulfa drugs change the course of history, from catapulting the FDA to prominence in the US to red...more
This might seem like ad copy hyperbole, but this book is in fact an excellent, exciting tale of scientific suspense. On many occasions, the lives of the very doctor's studying to find the perfect antibiotic hung in the balance. The discovery of sulfa drugs change the course of history, from catapulting the FDA to prominence in the US to red...more
This book combined multiple interests..medicine and history. The author captured the hope and fatalism of the pre-antibiotic era. The development of sulfonamides was a game changer. It altered the practice of medicine at such a fundamental level that we now have a hard time conceiving what things were like in the recent past. The author captures this.
Pretty good, definitely really informative and I learned a lot about the history of antibiotics. Between the descriptions of people dying of various horrible infections and the Nazi medical experiments some of these drugs inspired, this is not a book for the squeamish, but it is a well-written history of medicine.
A blissful return to non-fiction for me. This is a non-linear history of the development of antibiotics spurred by the brutal effects of war time wounds. I'm finding the interrelated stories of the scientists, doctors and industrials with the disparate motivations quite interesting.
The narrative thread mostly follows the life of Gerhard Domagk from the battlefields of WWI where he became interested in fighting bacterial infection through his work in research that garnered him the ...more
The narrative thread mostly follows the life of Gerhard Domagk from the battlefields of WWI where he became interested in fighting bacterial infection through his work in research that garnered him the ...more
An interesting look at the process that lead to the development of the sulfa drugs, the first effective antibiotics, which then looks at how their use transformed the way drugs are regulated and prescribed.
Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of medicine.
Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of medicine.
One of the best examples of clear, compelling scientific writing I've ever come across. Though I've studied organic chemistry and medical science for years, I never knew the amazing impact of sulfa--ranging from transformation of the medical profession, to the great influence it had on the way WWII was fought, to the creation of the FDA. Anyone interested in good science or historical writing really should pick this one up. For those interested in medicine, pharmacology, and infectious disease, ...more
I recommend this book. It traces the discovery of using sulfa as the first "antibiotic," acting as the world's first "miracle drug" saving innumerable lives. The culture and history of the times are described such that I realize how incredible it is that I never knew a world without antibiotics and how lucky I am for that.
I give the book only 4 stars because I found it hard to follow the time line of events. I don't think this is a problem for all readers, but i...more
I give the book only 4 stars because I found it hard to follow the time line of events. I don't think this is a problem for all readers, but i...more
How Gerhard Domagk, working for the Bayer portion of I. G. Farben, in conjunction with chemists Josef Klarer & Fritz Metzsch, found the 1st sulfanilamide drug effective against bacteria (mainly Strep) Needs a few chemical diagrams
This book is an example of why I love non-fiction. Thomas Hager tells as compelling a story as you're going to find in a great piece of fiction. Having watched my share of Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, I had a passing familiarity with sulfa drugs and battlefield injuries, but I had no idea of the long and complex story that lay behind their discovery and of the years it took and the number of people involved in the research. Hagen also shows how these early efforts to find drugs that...more
As a pharmacist, I'm always interested in the history behind the medications I dispense. This was a fascinating story, not only about the drug, but its influence on national and world events. Highly recommended!
This compelling and accessible history explores the development of the first man-made antibiotic. You might enjoy this account of medical history, and walk away feeling more appreciation for modern medicine.
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Author of six books of nonfiction about the ways in which science and technology change people's lives.
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