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Title details for The Drug Hunters by Donald R. Kirsch, Ph.D. - Wait list

The Drug Hunters

by Donald R. Kirsch, Ph.D.
Ogi Ogas, Ph.D.
Audiobook
Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity-by chewing, brewing, and snorting-some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the five-thousand-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze-age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings. Nowadays, Big Pharma conglomerates spend billions of dollars on state-of-the art laboratories staffed by PhDs to discover blockbuster drugs. Yet, despite our best efforts to engineer cures, luck, trial-and-error, risk, and ingenuity are still fundamental to medical discovery. The Drug Hunters is a colorful, fact-filled narrative history of the search for new medicines from our Neolithic forebears to the professionals of today, and from quinine and aspirin to Viagra, Prozac, and Lipitor.
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Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc. Edition: Unabridged

OverDrive Listen audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781515994688
  • File size: 218778 KB
  • Release date: January 3, 2017
  • Duration: 07:35:47

MP3 audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781515994688
  • File size: 218789 KB
  • Release date: January 3, 2017
  • Duration: 07:41:46
  • Number of parts: 8

Formats

OverDrive Listen audiobook
MP3 audiobook

subjects

History Medical Nonfiction

Languages

English

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity-by chewing, brewing, and snorting-some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the five-thousand-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze-age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings. Nowadays, Big Pharma conglomerates spend billions of dollars on state-of-the art laboratories staffed by PhDs to discover blockbuster drugs. Yet, despite our best efforts to engineer cures, luck, trial-and-error, risk, and ingenuity are still fundamental to medical discovery. The Drug Hunters is a colorful, fact-filled narrative history of the search for new medicines from our Neolithic forebears to the professionals of today, and from quinine and aspirin to Viagra, Prozac, and Lipitor.
Expand title description text
History Medical Nonfiction