In an age of technological wonders, few can equal the life-altering and life-saving drugs that have poured forth from laboratories and research teams in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Anti-psychotic drugs have emptied mental hospitals. Antibiotics have added years to average life expectancy. Birth control pills have transformed sex lives—and mores. Seeming miracles can feel almost routine: Jimmy Carter, after being diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in 2015, took a recently approved drug called pembrolizumab, which redirected his immune system and played a decisive role in ridding him of cancer.
In “Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine,” Thomas Hager, a veteran science writer, chronicles a range of drug-related breakthroughs, tracking the experimental efforts, occasional missteps and eureka moments that preceded them. The story, though filled with remarkable achievements, is of course not entirely a triumphalist one.
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