Miracle Cure: The Creation of Antibiotics and the Birth of Modern Medicine

by William Rosen

Overview

The epic history of how antibiotics were born, saving millions of lives and creating a vast new industry known as Big Pharma.

As late as the 1930s, virtually no drug intended for sickness did any good; doctors could set bones, deliver babies, and offer palliative care. That all changed in less than a generation with the discovery and development of a new category of medicine known as antibiotics. By 1955, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes had been transformed, trivializing once-deadly infections.

     William Rosen captures this revolution with all its false starts, lucky surprises, and eccentric characters. He explains why, given the complex nature of bacteria—and their ability to rapidly evolve into new forms—the only way to locate and test potential antibiotic strains is by large-scale, systematic, trial-and-error experimentation. Organizing that research needs large, well-funded organizations and businesses, and so our entire scientific-industrial complex, built around the pharmaceutical company, was born.

    Timely, engrossing, and eye-opening, Miracle Cure is a must-read science narrative—a drama of enormous range, combining science, technology, politics, and economics to illuminate the reasons behind one of the most dramatic changes in humanity’s relationship with nature since the invention of agriculture ten thousand years ago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143110538
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/08/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

William Rosen, author of The Third Horseman, Justinian’s Flea, and The Most Powerful Idea in the World, was an editor and a publisher at Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and the Free Press for nearly twenty-five years.

Table of Contents

Prologue "Five and a Half Grams" 1

1 "All the Worse for the Fishes" 5

2 "Patience, Skill, Luck, and Money" 39

3 "Play with Microbes" 79

4 "The People's Department" 120

5 "To See the Problem Clearly" 151

6 "Man of the Soil" 182

7 "Satans into Seraphs" 214

8 "The Little Stranger" 238

9 "Disturbing Proportions" 265

Epilogue "The Adaptability of the Chemist" 295

Acknowledgments 307

Notes 311

Bibliography 327

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

Rosen’s highly informed retelling captures the drama of scientists’ quest, against long odds, to find and produce bacteria-killing drugs—and the egos, ambitions, brilliance and resolve that drove them. . . . It is a strength of “Miracle Cure” that Rosen places its many tales of discovery in their larger contexts . . . an important contribution to a still-germane yet fast-receding history. And it’s all the more impressive that Rosen, formerly a book editor and publisher, wrote it as he was battling his own intractable disease.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“In Miracle Cure, William Rosen tells the lavish story of antibiotics with the flair and skill of a seasoned novelist, portraying his characters as all too-human, the research often fallible but occasionally transcendent. . . . Rosen's chronological approach gives the narrative its fluency; his wit and vivid detail make Miracle Cure an absorbing read. . . . A triumph of science writing that deserves a broad popular audience.”
—Minneapolie Star Tribune

"In this assured chronicle of the twentieth-century antibiotics revolution, William Rosen delivers reams of science at a thrilleresque pace. The experimentalists—Gerhard Domagk and Howard Florey among them—are vividly portrayed, as are the patients cured, the pharmaceutical corporations created and the moment in 1943 when bacteriologist Mary Hunt found the ancestor of all penicillin used today, on a mouldy melon. Antibiotic resistance and putative solutions are given their due, including Michael Fischbach's work on microbial-gene clusters in the human microbiome."
—Nature

“Former publisher and editor Rosen tackles a dazzling chapter of modern medical history in this chronicle of the discoveries that opened the age of antibiotics and gave humankind its first effective tool to fight back in an ‘eons-long war’ with infectious disease… Rosen’s thoughtful, scholarly, and engaging history is a powerful testament to this fight.”
—Publishers Weekly, (starred review)
 
“A richly documented history of the rise—and threatened future—of antibiotics… An encyclopedic reference for researchers and practitioners but also accessible for general readers due to Rosen's lively depiction of the people, places, and politics that color the history of the fight against infectious disease.”'
—Kirkus Reviews, (starred review)

"Miracle Cure is enthralling. Simply and elegantly, Rosen brings so much vibrancy to this narrative, and the science is gripping from beginning to end. A lucid and fascinating book, Miracle Cure is a must-read for anyone with a curious mind."
—Gilbert King, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning, Devil in the Grove

"Bill Rosen combines detailed analysis with a keen sense of humor to craft a page-turner describing the discovery of penicillin and streptomycin to combat scourges that had plagued man from time immemorial. This seminal historical work also warns the advances made during the antibiotics revolution in the 20th century are precarious and might be reversed if we fail to build upon the legacies of the heroic figures portrayed in Miracle Cure."
—Michael S Kinch, author of A Prescription for Change: The Looming Crisis in Drug Development

"Carefully researched, hugely informative, and immensely entertaining."
—Andreas Wagner, author of Arrival of the Fittest

"William Rosen integrates personal histories and scientific concepts so seamlessly that Miracle Cure reads like a novel—I found it difficult to put down. This definitive history of antibiotics is a must-read for anyone interested in modern medicine.”
—Karl Drlica, Public Health Research Institute, Rutgers University and author of Antibiotic Resistance 

“Rosen is a terrific storyteller and engaging stylist . . . He invites us to look beyond our . . . differences and recognize that we too live in a fragile equilibrium with the natural world.”
—The Daily Beast
 
“Readers will be swept along by the strong current of Mr. Rosen’s good natured erudition.”
—The Economist
 
“Rosen is a natural and playful storyteller, and his digressions both inform the narrative and lend it an eccentric and engaging rhythm.”
—The New York Times

“Rosen has a facility for the telling anecdote and the quirky aside.”
—Bill Gates 

From the Publisher

…Rosen skillfully blends scientific, political and economic history to trace the development of antibiotics and how they underwrote the modern pharmaceutical trade.

The New York Times Book Review - Amanda Schaffer

★ 03/13/2017
Former publisher and editor Rosen (The Third Horseman) tackles a dazzling chapter of modern medical history in this chronicle of the discoveries that opened the age of antibiotics and gave humankind its first effective tool to fight back in an “eons-long war” with infectious disease. It was a breathtaking leap of innovation. Rosen deftly recounts the early work of such pioneers as Louis Pasteur, who established the germ theory; Robert Koch, who linked a microorganism to a single disease; Paul Ehrlich, producer of the world’s first synthetic chemotherapeutic agent; Gerhard Domagk, whose lab found the first successful antibacterial drug; and Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered penicillin. Rosen posits that 19th- and 20th-century scientists’ most enduring contributions might have been institutional, in the forms of biological laboratory development and massive corporate funding from such giants as Merck, Pfizer, and Squibb that fueled the revolution in medicine. “Every triumphal discovery” in the dawning age of antibiotics, Rosen eloquently notes, “has been followed, sometimes in a matter of months, by a reminder that the enemy in this particular war may lose individual battles, but that the war against it is essentially eternal.” Rosen’s thoughtful, scholarly, and engaging history is a powerful testament to this fight. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (May)

Publishers Weekly

01/01/2017
The discovery of penicillin not only changed the relationship between humans and disease but, explains Rosen (The Third Horseman), required massive trial-and-error experimentation and hence massive funding, leading to Big Pharma.

Library Journal

Narrator Rob Shapiro’s resonant baritone carries the listener smoothly through this fascinating history of the chemicals and the personalities that helped create contemporary medical culture. While a handful of words are oddly pronounced, Shapiro effortlessly articulates the names of chemical compounds, bacterial species, French scientists, and German companies. Whether narrating the processes of discovery or the mechanisms by which the medicines work, his tone and pacing are as engaging and conversational as when he tells the stories of the people involved. This tale is filled with human foibles—rivalries, misconceptions, ambition, politics, heroism—and Shapiro perfectly conveys the author’s disapproval, amusement, and admiration. An entertaining production of an extraordinarily interesting book. D.L.Y. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Rob Shapiro’s resonant baritone carries the listener smoothly through this fascinating history of the chemicals and the personalities that helped create contemporary medical culture. While a handful of words are oddly pronounced, Shapiro effortlessly articulates the names of chemical compounds, bacterial species, French scientists, and German companies. Whether narrating the processes of discovery or the mechanisms by which the medicines work, his tone and pacing are as engaging and conversational as when he tells the stories of the people involved. This tale is filled with human foibles—rivalries, misconceptions, ambition, politics, heroism—and Shapiro perfectly conveys the author’s disapproval, amusement, and admiration. An entertaining production of an extraordinarily interesting book. D.L.Y. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2017 - AudioFile

★ 2017-03-07
A richly documented history of the rise—and threatened future—of antibiotics.Before the invention of antibiotics, doctors practiced "heroic medicine," rebalancing the body's humors with bloodletting, blistering, purges, enemas, and other primitive techniques. But in the late 1800s came Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, and suddenly the world knew that cholera, plague, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and other maladies were caused by invisible microbes: bacteria. So began the hunt for remedies. There were some successes—antitoxin for diphtheria, a vaccine for anthrax—but competition and venomous rivalries prevailed, pitting Pasteur against Koch, France against Germany. Rosen's (The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century, 2014, etc.) warts-and-all sketches of the key figures serve as refreshing antidotes to the hero-worship texts we read as schoolchildren. The author also deftly contrasts Germany's synthetic dye industry, which funded research that led to Paul Ehrlich's Salvarsan for syphilis, with the feeble research support elsewhere. But the real revolution in remedies had to wait until World War II and the rediscovery of penicillin, when British scientists came to America for help in the fermentation process needed to generate copious amounts of the extract. Then came Selman Waksman, who coined the word "antibiotic" and found in a soil sample a bacterial strain that produced its own antibacterial product that worked against TB. The race was on for other useful soil microbes, and numerous drug companies emerged (and merged), from small producers of herbals and botanicals to big-time generators of lucrative broad-spectrum antibiotics. Rosen also charts the course of the FDA and the development of testing and safety protocols. Unfortunately, the current scene is ominous. Antibiotic resistance is serious and continues to grow thanks to low dosages of antibiotics still allowed in animal feeds. Rosen offers some hope regarding new approaches to combat resistance, but they seem meager. An encyclopedic reference for researchers and practitioners but also accessible for general readers due to Rosen's lively depiction of the people, places, and politics that color the history of the fight against infectious disease.

Kirkus Reviews