The Drug Hunters

The surprising, behind-the-scenes story of how our medicines are discovered, told by a veteran drug hunter.The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human ra ...

The surprising, behind-the-scenes story of how our medicines are discovered, told by a veteran drug hunter.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 Pharm