From battered battlefields to lonely laboratories and into the depths of overgrown jungles, author Keith Veronese reveals the remarkable stories behind the development of the drugs and medicines that have shaped our world. Discover the fascinating history behind the unlikely creation of drugs and medicines including: Nitrous oxide: Almost all of us know nitrous oxide from trips to the dentist's office, but its discovery is a tale of riots, self-experimentation, and suicide. Digoxin: When correctly prescribed, this drug can help heart efficiency, but in higher doses it can prove fatal, a fact known all too well by Charles Cullen, a nurse who used digoxin as a weapon on the way to killing an estimated forty patients. Iproniazid: Tested in tuberculosis sanitariums during the 1950s, iproniazid exhibited a puzzling side effect-elevating a patient's mood. The first MAOI (monoamine oxidase inhibitor), iproniazid paved the way for a legion of antidepressants to follow. Botulinum toxin: How did one of the world's most deadly neurotoxins go from its nineteenth-century detection as the origin of a foodborne illness to something we willingly inject into our face? Acetylsalicylic acid: Better known as aspirin, half of the duo that synthesized acetylsalicylic acid discovered heroin just two weeks later, while the true genius behind aspirin's development found himself without credit and forced into a concentration camp at the age of seventy-six. Nitrogen mustards: Derived from mustard gas, a plague of World War I battlefields, nitrogen mustards brought the world its first form of cancer fighting chemotherapy. Book jacket.