A must read for science lovers

Beautifully written book, amazing stories about live changing drugs together with meaningful data to make inform decisions about the pills we take

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1 person found this helpful

Fascinating

I don’t even know why I bought this, it just struck me as interesting I don’t have a particular interest in the subject matter, but I’m glad I gave it a go. The whole subject is just fascinating, the history of drug development, the pitfalls, the triumphs and advances. It gives food for thought about one’s own decisions and casts a cautious eye over the workings of the drug industry. The book flows well, is very accessible but in depth enough to come away having learned a lot. The narration is also excellent.

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Very informative

Easy for the layman to understand.
Particularly found the history accounts of drugs and medicines fascinating.

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facinating book

facinating and accessible text for anyone interested in how drugs have shaped human history and society. I would highly recommend this to anyone curious about the world of drugs from a scientific, social or historical perspective.
good narrator, well paced and good recoding quality.

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Fascinating and informative

Beautifully read and extremely interesting. From early opium use which was a blessing and a curse, then on to other drugs down the ages, several of which were lauded as a great answer to addiction problems that arose from a previous lauded drug...and so the pattern continued over the decades, each " solution" seemingly more dangerous than its predecessor. Really informative.

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The world of "cures" or maybe not.

From bigotry to big pharma and the corporate profit associated with your desire to live for ever...or not.

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Pharma for everyone

Great narration, good inclusions and a levelheaded presentation. For the layperson and pharmaphile alike.

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Very interesting and engaging

Anyone interested in pharmaceuticals and the history and use of drugs in general will enjoy this book. Ironically, I learned that the excellent narrator died of a heart condition very young whilst reading the section on heart medicine.

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The history of medicine - really interesting

What a fantastic book about the history of medicine. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about early use of opioids (laudanum), pain killers, antibiotics, obituates and more. The early chapters look at the trade of drugs - the initial excitement about their discovery, the politics, followed by the negative side effects. He looked at who used to push drugs, who pushes drugs now. (Historically users often tended to be the well off and middle classes with medical professionals extolling their benefits). There is a very interesting part that seems to rewrite the history I was taught about smallpox and vaccinations. It includes the pioneering work of Edward Jenner, but then we hear that actually in Turkey, vaccinations were happening a long time before he came along!

There is a chapter about statins, where the author, Thomas Hager, looks at their history, who benefits and the risks they may pose. Using his own personal experience he argues that deciding whether or not to take them is not as clear as the pharmaceutical industry leads us to believe.

The book meanders through history, the breakthroughs, euphoria, the tragic consequences of unknown side effects through poor or ineffective drug trialing. The pattern throughout history becomes apparent that drugs start off being celebrated for their amazing properties and only later, usually when it’s too late comes the realisation that there are usually major negative side-effects.

As a historical overview I enjoyed this a lot.

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8 people found this helpful

Entertaining and informative

The story more or less alternates between recreational drugs and drugs to prevent illness: antibiotics, vaccines, statins. Plus a chapter on the contraceptive pill. The style is very much informative but entertaining at the same time, with plenty of anecdotes and little asides which is always an indicator that a topic has been well researched. Opiates and statins remain controversial topics and are likely to remain so regardless of progress in the next few years, but the book does predate Covid, it would be nice to have a new chapter to cover that. Above all, the future does look bright but there are some tough nuts that medicine still has to crack.

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