Page 234 - Inventions - A Visual Encyclopedia (DK - Smithsonian)

Medical marvels

Tylenol,
a brand of Major advances and breakthroughs in medical science
acetaminophen,
1983 have been made in the past few centuries. These have
vastly increased the number of drugs and types of
medical equipment available to us. While some offer

life-saving treatments, others target minor aches and
IN GOOD HEALTH pains. Indeed, medicine has become specialized in a

way that would have seemed unthinkable to doctors
a few hundred years ago.

Painkillers The miracle drug

■ ■ What? Acetaminophen ■ ■ What? Aspirin
■ ■ Who? Harmon Northrop Morse ■ ■ Who? Felix Hoffman
■ ■ Where and when? US, 1877 ■ ■ Where and when? Germany, 1897
Sometimes it can take a while for a Aspirin is used for treating such a wide
drug to catch on. In 1877, an American range of ailments, including headaches,
chemist developed the now popular drug heart attacks, blood clots, and strokes,
acetaminophen, which is usually used as that it is sometimes known as the “miracle
a mild painkiller and flu medication. drug.” It is a synthetic form of a natural
But unfounded doubts about its safety substance called salicylic acid, which is
meant that it wasn’t released to the found in willow bark and has been used
public until 1950. to treat illnesses for centuries.

Carton of
soluble aspirin
powder, 1900

Breathing easy

■ ■ What? Iron lung
■ ■ Who? Philip Drinker and
Dr. Louis Agassiz Shaw
■ ■ Where and when? US, 1927
Patients whose breathing muscles were
paralyzed by an accident or disease
could be helped to breathe again with
the invention of the iron lung. It was a
cumbersome machine—the patient had to
be almost entirely enclosed within it—but
it saved lives. It has since been replaced
by smaller respirators and air ventilators.
An iron lung helps a patient to breathe, 1940
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