Crown Publishers
Titles appearing in SciTech Book News — December 2006
The demon under the microscope; from battlefield hospitals to Nazi labs; one doctor's heroic search for the world's first miracle drug.
Hager, Thomas.
Harmony Books, ©2006 340 p. $24.95 RM666
1-4000-8213-7
Science writer Hager describes the strange journey of the sulfa drug and the man who found it almost by accident, Dr. Gerhard Domagk, whose major blunder, if indeed he committed one, was discovering it the year Hitler took over his native Germany. The drug became a tool of the Allies as well as the Nazis, and finally a generation managed to survive the wounds of war. Domagk, however, barely survived the Gestapo; the corporate executives for whom he worked were defendants in the Nuremberg Trials; the US experienced the worst mass poisoning in its history; and the ways and means of developing new medicines were changed forever, perhaps not for the better. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
