The First Miracle Drugs

May 11, 2008

On Christmas Day 1932, the German chemical combine I.G. Farbenindustrie
filed a patent application on behalf of a red dye that its medical researchers
and chemists had found to have a remarkable ability to cure certain kinds of bac-
terial infections in mice. By the time the patent was awarded just over two years
later, the dye, now called by the trade name Prontosil, had been found to have the
same curative powers in humans. Announced in a brief publication in a German
medical journal in February 1935 by Gerhard Domagk, the medical researcher re-
sponsible for the work, Prontosil went on the market and became available to doc-
tors in April 1935.
In retrospect, it is clear that the introduction of Prontosil marked a turning
point in the history of medicine. As the first of the compounds called sulfon-
amides or, more familiarly, sulfa drugs, Prontosil initiated a revolution in the ther-
apeutics and management of bacterial infections. Within a few years, feared
diseases such as streptococcal infections (including childbed fever and sep-
ticemia), pneumonia, meningitis, dysentery, gonorrhea, and urinary tract infec-
tions, were brought under a substantial measure of control by chemotherapy. The
medical success of the sulfa drugs gave a powerful impetus to the expansion of the
international pharmaceutical industry and of the research and development enter-
prise within it….

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