Leprosy in modern history

Leprosy is also known as Hansen’s disease or neurodermatitis and is caused by a rod-shaped bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, that is spread in droplets of nasal mucus.

According to historical and archeological evidence leprosy was first spread to the Middle East in the days of Alexander the Great, during the years 324-325 BC, and was not known before.

The Greek word lepra was most likely used to mean a variety of severe skin diseases. Greek medical writings later than the third century BC provide the earliest clinical references to modern leprosy.

In medieval Europe, leprosy patients had to carry a ‘clapper’ to warn others that a person with leprosy was approaching. Even as late as 1913, state Senator G.E Willet of Montana was forced to give up his seat after he was diagnosed with leprosy.

In the 1870s, Armauer Hansen discovered microbe that causes the affliction and treatments were eventually developed. A prominent dermatologist in Norway, Daniel Cornelius Danielsen, wrote the first extensive description of leop0rsy, it was this description that Hansen used 20 year later as the basis for his studies of leprosy.

In the 1980s, a set of drugs was discovered that together can stop the progress of the disease. Today, 75% of all cases of leprosy occur in South East Asia, primarily in India.
Leprosy in modern history

Discovery of morphine by Friedrich Sertürner

The use of a wide of variety of opium alkaloids, obtained from the dried sap of Papaver somniferum, has been reported ins several cultures. The potential of opium was known and used in ancient Greece, Rome as well as Arab cultures.

Morphine, which is the benzylisoquinoline alkaloid, occurs in significant amounts in opium.

Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner (1783-1855) was a German pharmacist who discovered and isolated morphine from opium in 1804. He named the compound morphine, after Morpheus, the Greek god of dream.

Morhium or morphine is generally accepted as being the first medicinal alkaloid isolated from any plant.

The achievement was the most important ‘quantum leap’ in the history of pharmacology and represents the beginning of the true chemical investigation of plants.

Joseph Caventou (1795-1877) and Pierre Pelletier (1788-1842) were French pharmacist who applied the methods of Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner and were among the first to isolate a number of extremely toxic, yet medicinally important alkaloids  including emetine in 1817, strychnine in 1818, quinine 1820 and veratrine in 1821.

With the invention of the hypodermic needle in 1853, morphine’s use became widespread. Decades alter, heroin was synthesized by Dresser by diacetylating morphine.
Discovery of morphine by Friedrich Sertürner

History of sulfonamide

Soon after the introduction of sulfonamide into clinical practice it was discovered that its antibacterial activity was antagonized by pus, as well as by tissue or yeast extracts. The revelation that sulfonamide was a systematically active antibacterial agent caught the attention of several companies. The first analogue was marketed in 1937 by Schering-Kahlbaum of Berlin, namely sulfacetamide.

A variety of antagonists of vitamins, hormones and cell metabolites had been synthesized after Donald Woods of Oxford University discovered in 1940 that sulfonamides exerted their antibacterial action by antagonizing the role of 4-aminobenzoic acid, a growth factor and essential for the survival parasites, be they bacteria, protozoa or viruses. Such antagonists were described as antimetabolites.

During World War II sulfonamides were used as wound dressings by the armed involved in the conflict. It has been estimated that more than 5000 sulfonamide does were prepared in the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1942, Marcel Janbon and co-workers discovered that sulfonylureas (sulfonamide derivatives) induced hypoglycemia in animals. These discoveries lead to antidiabetic drugs. These drugs use to manage Type 2 diabetes mellitus by increasing insulin release from the beta cells in the pancreas.
History of sulfonamide 

Vioxx by Merck

Vioxx (Rofecoxib) a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) was introduced to the market in 1999.  In 1994, Merck’s R&D program discovered Vioxx, one of a group COX-2 inhibitors, COX-2 inhibitors include over the counter medications such as Advil (ibuprofen) and Aleve (naproxen) that serve to reduce both pain and inflammation.

From 1994 through 1999, Merck navigated the Food and Drug Administration approval process, one that has incremental steps for approval. In May 1999 approved Vioxx for the relief of osteoarthritis symptoms and management of acute pain.

Merck made billions on profits from Vioxx. Vioxx was one of the major sources of revenue for Merck while on the market: It was marketed in more than eighty countries with worldwide sales totaling $2.5 billion in 2003.

In September 2004, Merck was forced to take Vioxx off the market after a three-year study demonstrated that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes in patients taking it for at least eighteen months. According to an epidemiologist study done by Graham, an FDA scientist, Vioxx has been associated with more than 27,000 heart attacks or deaths.

A May 2006 study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated that Vioxx may raise the risk of heart attacks for patients who took the RX for less than two weeks.
Vioxx by Merck 

History of morphine

Morphine is one of the principle ingredients of opium. It is one of the most powerful natural pain relievers known and has become the standard against which other opiates, natural and synthetic are judged. Morphine and opium belong to a larger family of drugs named the opiates, which are known for producing a wide range of effects from sedation to constipation.

Opium was used sparingly in Europe during the middle ages, but its popularity increased during the Renaissance. By the dawn of the 19th century, opium addiction was a major problem.

The most of the earlier references to the poppy plant and opium from Sumerian, Greece, Roman, and Arab texts indicate that people were keenly aware of the therapeutic benefits of this drug early in history.

The Sumerian used the words hul, meaning ‘joy’ and gil meaning ‘plant’, when referring to the poppy plant.

In early 1850s, Alexander Wood, a Scottish physician, reasoned that the best way to relieve painful extremity injuries would be to inject morphine directly into the nerves that supplied the painful area.

In 1804, Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner (1783-1841) isolated morphine from raw opium and his classic paper published in 1817. He chose the name morphine for Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.

After he tested the extract on dogs, Sertürner used himself as a guinea pig, and almost died in the process.

The drug quickly became a legal analgesic that most were able to use safely. It was only after the later introduction of the hypodermic needle, which made intravenous injections possible, that morphine became commonly associated with abuse and addiction.
History of morphine

Discovery of atenolol

Atenolol is a Beta-1 cardio-selective adreno-receptor blocking agent discovered and developed by ICI in 1976.

Beta blockers are among one of the safest and most effective anti-hypertensive drugs available.

Practolol was the first cardio-selective beta -blocker, also discovered and developed by ICI in the mid-1960s, but ICI withdrew it in 1975 after it was found to be toxic.

In 1964 ICI eventually produced the drug propranolol, which possessed a better efficacy and safety profile. Propranolol is now widely used in the management of angina, hypertension, arrhythmia, and migraine headache.

Two additional beta-blockers, Atenolol and Practolol, were later discovered.

Atenolol was launched in the market under the trade name Tenormin in 1976, and became the best-selling Beta-blocker in the world in the 1980s and 1990s.
Discovery of atenolol

Psychoactive Drugs

Psychoactive Drugs
The historical record of drugs consumed by our Neolithic ancestors could have been unduly influenced by those that exhibited an effect in the mind, such as mescal bean, peyotl, betel, the poppy, alcohol, coca, cannabis, tobacco, soma and pituri.

The social and recreational use of these drugs is associated with artifact, in much the same way as nicotine and alcohol are today involved with pipes and liquor glasses respectively.

Drug employed for medicinal purposes, by contrast, do not leave enduring evidence of their consumptions, particularly if they were also considered to be foods rather than medicine – as is still the case today among North American Indians who cultivate certain plants for consumption as food, yet also employ them for therapeutic purpose.

It is hardly surprising therefore that archeologists have found more evidence of drugs for social and recreational purposes that those selected as medicinal substances.

It is noteworthy that when written records appeared in the third millennium BC onwards, psychoactive drugs did not appear to be dominant.

Not only has it been controversial that the original use of drugs was in religious rituals but it has even been claimed that early religious practices arose from the cultic use of psychoactive drugs.

This may controversial, but the role of wine in religious practice in ancient times is beyond dispute if we consider the Greek Dionysian festivities, the Roman Bacchanalia and the importance of wine in Judaism and Christianity.
Psychoactive Drugs

Drug During Prehistoric Period

Drug During Prehistoric Period
In 1975, Ralph Solecki of Columbia University described excavation at the Shanidar Cave in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq, where he had unearthed 60 thousand year old Neanderthal bones laid out in the foetal position.

Alongside were clusters of pollen grains from 28 species of flowers.

As seven of these were recognized to be medicinal herbs, it was suggested that this could explain their presence.

The presence of a few plants that are reputed to posses medicinal properties does not in itself mean they were used for such purposes.

They could simply have been food, especially as ancient medicines often originated as components of the diet that were deemed to have beneficial effects on health.

There is indirect evidence of drug use in the Neolithic periods, which began around 11 thousand years ago.

Among remains of plants found in the Spirit Cave in the north-west of Thailand seeds were of the mildly psychoactive betel nut (Areca catechu), placed there between 7000 and 5500 BC.

The earliest direct evidence for human consumption of betel nut comes from the Duyong Cave in the Philippines, where a skeleton from 2680 BC were found buried beside shells containing lime.

This is reminiscent of the practice still seen in India, of wrapping the nut in betel leaf (Piper betel), adding lime (thus liberating the readily absorbable free base of arecoline), then chewing.

As with modern users of betel nut, the teeth of the Duyong Cave skeleton were blackened.
Drug During Prehistoric Period