The Demon Under the Microscope

Chemistry was my worst class in college. I worked so hard, and learned so little. The experience left me frustrated and bitter, so it would take an awfully good author to interest me in a story about an innovation in organic chemistry. Thomas Hager is a good author, and The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug is a good book.

In 1932 a team at Bayer AG (a division of the infamous German chemical company IG Farben), headed by Gerhard Domagk, developed a new chemical. The chemical, marketed as Prontosil by the Germans and containing the compound sulfanilamide, was a powerful medicine, one of a group that came to be known as sulfa antibiotics. Sulfa revolutionized health care all over the world. In 1924, Calvin Coodlidge, Jr., the 15-year-old son of the President of the United States, died of an infection that spread from a blistered toe. After sulfa came on the market, not just the treatment of infections but the medical establishment's entire attitude towards illness was different.

Hager grounds the story of Domagk and his chemical innovation in its cultural relevance, going all the way back to the first observation of "animalcules" (or bacteria) by a Dutch lens-grinder named Antoine van Leeuwenhoek in 1676; through the use of antiseptics in surgery by Joseph Lister in the late 19th century; through the bloody battlefields and septic operating rooms of World War I; to the sulfa experiments performed by the Nazis on women prisoners in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

The book's many digressions are fascinating. I learned about the development of the German chemical industry in the 20th century, and the way it was affected by the rise of the Nazi party. I learned about the 1937 recall of one sulfa-containing cough syrup after it was linked to the deaths of over 100 people, and the subsequent strengthening of the powers of the FDA to ensure the safety of medicines. I even learned a little about chemistry.

The Demon Under the Microscope can be found in our catalog here. If you prefer to listen to it on audiobook, click here.