Susceptibilities

Louis Lewin seems to have been the first to write a treatise on adverse drug reactions. According to The Incidental Effects of Drugs: A Pharmacological and Clinical Handbook,1 the causes of adverse drug reactions, “may be either peculiar to the individual, or dependent upon temporal or local influences, or the quality of the drug.” Lewin wrote this more than 50 years before 73 people died from taking Massengill’s Elixir Sulfanilamide—made up in diethylene glycol, a sweet but deadly solvent.2 …