The Age of Cures: How American Scientists Saved Your Life

Summary

From the acclaimed author of Billion Dollar Molecule and The Antidote, a revisionist, passionate history of the pharmaceutical industry, detailing how the nascent industry ushered in an age of cures.

The Age of Cures is the in-depth history of the birth of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. Barry Werth is the author of Billion Dollar Molecule and The Antidote, two highly acclaimed books on the pharmaceutical industry. In The Age of Cures, he takes us back to a time before modern medicine.

In the early part of the twentieth century, patients routinely died from the flu, if they didn’t contract a more potent disease like rubella, mumps, or polio. Yet with advances in technology, the young talent at universities across the country, and the significant investment from a federal government eager to prepare for a second world war, medicine exploded in the 1930s to the 1960s to finally meet the needs of a sick populace. Finally, “miracle drugs” were available for the first time: penicillin and wide-spectrum antibiotics, cortisone, and a polio vaccine.

Werth convincingly shows us how this crucial investment in science made America modern, and a scientific powerhouse for decades to come.