{"product_id":"the-demon-under-the-microscope-isbn-9781400082148","title":"The Demon Under the Microscope","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn\u003ci\u003e The Demon Under the Microscope\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas Hager   chronicles the dramatic history of sulfa, the first antibiotic and the drug that shaped modern medicine.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed   laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. Sulfa saved   millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt   Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs   were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients;   and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created   in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment   of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A strange   and colorful story,\u003ci\u003e The Demon Under the Microscope\u003c\/i\u003e illuminates the vivid characters,   corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism,   heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa   to the world. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue   of a great suspense novel.“Fascinating . . . A rousing, valuable contribution to the history of medicine.”  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A well-told tale of trail-blazing science.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBooklist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Highly recommended.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLibrary Science\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"This is a grand story, and Mr. Hager tells  it well...one can easily imagine 'The Demon Under the Microscope,' like 'Microbe  Hunters' before it, inspiring in young, idealistic readers the enthusiasm for medical  research and the zeal for healing that generates great physicians.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWall Street  Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Surprisingly entertaining...[Hager's] enthusiasm for the search for a 'magic  bullet' drug in the early 20th century is infectious.  He convincingly credits sulfa  drugs for some of the most revolutionary and catastrophic moments in medicine.  And  anecdotes about famous people affected—from Calvin Coolidge to Eleanor Roosevelt—are narrative spoonfuls of sugar.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Grips the reader from  the first paragraph...a story of dedication, luck, tragedy and triumph that's still  relevant today.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBookpage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Hager, a biographer of Linus Pauling, does a remarkable  job of transforming material fit for a graduate biology seminar into highly entertaining  reading. He knows that lay readers need plenty of personality and local color, and  his story is rich with both.  This yarn prefigures the modern rush for corporate  pharma patents; it is testament to Hager's skills that the inherently unsexy process  of finding the chemicals that might help conquer strep is as exciting an account  of the hunt for a Russian submarine.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eVeteran science and medical writer \u003cb\u003eThomas Hager\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of three books, including   \u003ci\u003eForce of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling\u003c\/i\u003e, and his work has appeared in publications   ranging from \u003ci\u003eReader’s Digest\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eMedical Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e. A former director of the \u003ci\u003eUniversity   of Oregon Press\u003c\/i\u003e, contributing editor to \u003ci\u003eAmerican Health\u003c\/i\u003e, and correspondent for the   \u003ci\u003eJournal of the American Medical Association\u003c\/i\u003e, he lives in Eugene, Oregon.\u003cp\u003eChapter One\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGerhard Domagk looked at the blood soaking his tunic. It was 1914,  a   few days before Christmas. The German army had just finished an   artillery barrage.  Domagk's unit had been sent in, the young men and   their officers walking slowly  through the yellowing grass toward a   Polish farmhouse, their breath showing white,  when shots came from   somewhere to their left. Domagk saw the officer nearest him  fall.   Then he felt a blow to his head. His helmet flew off and landed   somewhere  in the grass. His chest felt hot. When he looked down, he   saw the blood. He had  attended a single term of medical school before   joining the army and knew enough  to give himself a quick exam. He   found no wound on his body. Then he discovered  the source. Blood was   streaming from his head, down his neck, and onto his shirt.  He   explored his scalp gently with his fingers. Hard to say how bad the   gash was,  but it had probably opened when the bullet knocked his   helmet off. He bandaged  himself with a large handkerchief. Then he   passed out. When he awoke, he was jolting  through trees in a farmer's   cart toward what had been a church, now a German field  hospital,   where he was examined, his bleeding stopped, and his wound dressed.    When the staff decided that it appeared likely he would survive, he   was packed  onto a train to Berlin, to recuperate in a central   hospital. The wound did not  look serious, but there was no way to   know if there would be permanent brain damage.  Time would tell.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe blow to his head did not change Domagk's mind about the  war. He,   like most of his fellow university students, had been infected and   rendered  mildly delirious during the epidemic of patriotic fever that   swept Germany in the  summer of 1914. The tall, thin boy volunteered   for service with more than a dozen  of his classmates and friends soon   after war was declared. They were inducted as  a group into the   Leibgrenadier Regiment of Frankfort on the Oder, a unit specializing    in the use of grenades. They were given a few weeks of cursory   training. Then  they were loaded onto a train for Flanders.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey were young and full of energy,  eager to join Germany's march,   giddy with visions of a short, glorious war. Domagk,  the son of a   village schoolmaster, was eighteen years old and ready for adventure.    He was also a young gentleman who brought his lute to training camp   and played  folk tunes around the campfire. He wanted to take the   instrument with him to the  front. When his officers told him that   regulations forbade it, he dismantled it,  sent the body back to his   parents, and kept the neck attached to his knapsack as  a memento.   Inside the knapsack he carried a photo of his village sweetheart   dressed  in her white Communion gown.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow, months later, he was beginning to miss his  home, Lagow in the   lake country of far eastern Germany. Picturesque and quiet,  Lagow   became the source of ever-sunnier memories the longer he spent in the   army:  cannonballing into the river below the mill; a swarm of   children flying out of  school at the end of the day; a group of   friends concocting homemade gunpowder;  sneaking his first cigar; the   taste of a ripe pear in late summer. He spent his  nineteenth birthday   in the trenches of Flanders under fire from British ships,  huddled in   the dirt, \"the heavens lit,\" he wrote his parents, \"from burning   villages.\"  The glory of war began to fade. He and his comrades were   soaked by freezing autumn  rains, exhausted, starving, their uniforms   caked with muck. Once while digging  for drinking water, they broke   open an abscess in the earth, a cache of rotting  French soldiers, men   killed and buried, he figured, by his own unit's grenades.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Germans were dug in near the Belgian coastal town of Nieuport,   where in  late October the Leibgrenadier Regiment of Frankfort on the   Oder was ordered to  participate in a massive attack. Their officers   told them that following a 4:00  a.m. German artillery barrage they   would charge forward from their trenches and  drive the enemy from   their trenches. The young men synchronized their watches.  They wrote   last letters home and put them in their pockets, promising each other    that the living would deliver them for the dead. They waited for what   seemed  a very long time in the dark, listening to shells screaming   overhead, watching  the flashes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen the barrage stopped, the young German soldiers struggled and    slipped out of their holes. They slogged through a football field's   length of  mud before they started falling, then heard the chattering   of machine guns at short  range, each one firing as many bullets as   250 rifle-equipped soldiers. Most of  the boys Domagk had joined with   were dead within a few seconds. The rest ran. Domagk  later figured   that only he and two or three others out of his group of fifteen    student volunteers survived the battle alive and unwounded. They   learned later  that their charge was part of a huge failed offensive   in which the Germans lost  135,000 soldiers, many of them recent   university students, in the course of four  weeks of fierce fighting.   The British called it the First Battle of Ypres. The  Germans called   it Kindermord: \"The Massacre of the Innocents.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToo ripped  up to fight any longer in Flanders, Domagk and what   remained of the Leibgrenadiers  were transferred to the Eastern Front.   A few weeks later, he lost his helmet near  the Polish farmhouse. When   he began to gather his senses about him in a Berlin  hospital room, he   discovered that his knapsack was gone, along with the neck of  his   lute and the photo of his sweetheart. All he now had of his childhood   were  memories. He remembered his father sitting at the window,   waiting for the lamp  man. The gas streetlights in Lagow were lit   every evening by the lamp man, who  came came by with his white horse.   Then one day the man stopped coming. When Gerhard's  father explained   to him that the lamp man had been delayed because his horse was  sick,   the young boy was stricken by the idea. \"I said at the end of the   evening  prayer with my mother, 'Good God, please make the lamp man   come again,'\" he remembered.  \"'Make his horse better again.' \"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe German army hospital administration in  Berlin, on reviewing their   records, found that wounded Leibgrenadier Gerhard Domagk  had attended   a bit of medical school. It was decided that rather than send him    back to the front lines, they would set him to the task of providing   medical  care for the wounded. Domagk was placed in a training program   for medical assistants,  one of hundreds of novices hastily pressed   into service. After a few weeks of first-aid  training, he was sent   back to the Eastern Front, through Krakow to a field hospital  in the   Ukraine. He was fascinated by his trip through \"the culture of the   East,\"  as he called it, the lands of Germany's destiny, the   \"beautiful but dirty streets,\"  the Jews with \"caftans reaching over   their long boots and their corkscrew-like  curls hanging down from   their temples.\" He was especially impressed by the architecture  he   saw.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFlanders had been bad, but the Eastern Front was in many ways worse,    especially when it came to medical care. The German casualties were   just as heavy,  but the hospitals were cruder, doctors fewer, supplies   scarcer. The field hospital  to which Domagk was assigned was stark, a   farm in the middle of the woods roughly  converted into a care   facility with tents for wards and a barn for an operating  room. Every   day a miscellany of ambulances, cars, trucks, and farm carts arrived,    disgorged their loads of quiet, white-faced wounded, and left for   more. There  was a constant, deep rumble from big guns a few miles   away.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey were seeing  wounds no one had ever seen before, thanks to the   advance of military and industrial  science. Newly deployed and   unprecedentedly powerful weapons--artillery that could  shoot shells   120 kilometers, high-explosive shells like the giant \"Jack Johnsons\"    that geysered black earth a hundred feet in the air, airplanes and   aerial bombs,  tanks and poison gas--were slaughtering men at a rate   and in ways unimaginable  a few years earlier. In previous wars men   had been shot or stabbed. Now they were  blown to bits. The new   weapons changed both the manner of fighting--more trenches,  fewer   cavalry charges--and what happened after. Because of the new weapons,   the  number of dead and wounded on both sides was staggering. During   the entire Franco-Prussian  War in the 1870s, a total of a quarter of   a million men were killed and wounded  on both sides over ten months   of battle--roughly the same total number of killed  and wounded at the   First Battle of Ypres alone. Military leaders realized within  a few   months of the war's start that they needed to quickly expand their   medical  services. Anyone with any medical ability was pressed into   service in the rapidly  growing network of hospitals. That was how   Domagk ended up in the woods of the  Ukraine.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304224411877,"sku":"NP9781400082148","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400082148.jpg?v=1767738987","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-demon-under-the-microscope-isbn-9781400082148","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}