359 



More sophisticated chemistry contributed importantly to the de- 

 velopment of diiigs in the 19th century. The first organic synthesis 

 was reported in 1828, and toward the end of the century numerous 

 drugs were being derived from the complex material, coal tar. For 

 example, German chemists introduced aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) 

 as a specific for headache and fever in 1899. By the early 1930's the 

 science of organic chemistry began to burgeon as laboratory tech- 

 niques of synthesis were expanded and techniques for characterizing 

 various structures of complex organic molecules were developed. It 

 became possible to identify and characterize the active molecules in 

 natural drugs, and to reproduce these molecules — or even deliberately 

 designed variants of them — by synthesis in the laboratory. Most 

 drugs today are analogies of natural compounds, with purposeful 

 modifications. 



Many remedies, medicines, and nostrums were available on the mar- 

 ket by the beginning of the present century, when Congress found 

 it necessary to regulate this traffic in the interest of national health and 

 safety. The Pure Food and Drug Act, approved by President Theodore 

 Roosevelt, June -30, 1906, forbade interstate commerce in adulterated 

 or improperly labeled drugs. Laboratoi-y findings were to be the re- 

 sponsibility of the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture. In 1912, this act was extended to the prohibition of false claims 

 as to the therapeutic eft'ects of drugs in interstate commerce. 



Stronger legislation was proposed in 1933 by Senator Eoyal C. Cope- 

 land, former commissioner of health for New York City, in order to 

 assure tlie proper testing of drugs before they were admitted to gen- 

 eral use. In mid-1937, when the drug sulfanilamide came into use as 

 an antibiotic, a chemist produced a liquid form of the drug by dis- 

 solving it in di ethylene glycol, a toxic solvent. Before the "elixir sulfa- 

 nilamide" had been witlidrawn from tlie market, 108 persons had died 

 of its effects. To prevent a repetition of this disaster, the Congress by 

 an act of June 1938, embodying part of the Copeland proposal, re- 

 quired that before new drugs entered interstate commerce they must 

 be qualified by the Food and Drug Administration as safe under the 

 recommended conditions of use. 



After 1940, the march of science in the practice of medicine, and in 

 the synthesis of new therapeutic compounds by organic chemists, ren- 

 dered the management and control of drugs increasingly complex and 

 difficult. A veritable explosion in new drug development occurred dur- 

 ing and after World War II. Penicillin, which had been discovered 

 in 1928, became widely available commercially in 1944, and was shortly 

 joined by a variety of similar antibiotic compounds. The steroids ap- 

 peared, first in the form of cortisone in 1949, and prednisone and others 

 soon after. The tranquilizers came into use about 1952, and quickly 

 proliferated into a whole family of compounds with similar effects. 



