Frank Potter Jr., age 16 „ of Meridian, Miss., for his question:
WHEN WERE DRUGS FIRST USED?
Doctors now prescribe drugs to treat and prevent many diseases. But today's modern drugs, for the most part, were unknown before the 1900s.
Our greatest modern germ fighting drugs, for example, are the sulfa drugs and antibiotics. These did not come into use until the late 1930s and the early 1940s.
Before 1940, about 25 percent of all pneumonia victims in the United States died of the disease. But new drugs quickly reduced the death rate and today it is less than 5 percent.
Polio vaccine, a very important drug, wasn't introduced until 1955. At that time, polio hit about 30,000 to 50,000 Americans every year. By 1960, with a wide use of vaccine, the number of new polio cases was reduced to less than 3,000 a year.
We generally use the word "drugs" to mean only medicines and certain other chemical substances that people use. But the scientists who study drugs, called "pharmacologists," consider all chemicals that affect living things to be drugs.
They classify insecticides, weed killers and a wide variety of other substances as drugs. They even consider the chemicals of automobile exhaust to be drugs.
Properly used, drugs can be one of the medical profession's most valuable tools. But improperly used, drugs can cause sickness and death.
Doctors point out that no drug is absolutely safe. Proper use of a drug can usually be beneficial, but improper use is almost sure to be harmful.
Perhaps the most important rule to remember about drugs is never to take one unless it is prescribed for you by a doctor. Only a physician or dentist can determine which drug will help a person.
A drug that works for someone else may not work for you. Often the wrong drug can cause problems with the brain and other parts of the nervous system.
Drugs are given in different ways. Once in the body, however, almost all drugs work the same way they alter the speed of cell activities.
Most drugs that are swallowed, inhaled or injected enter the bloodstream and travel throughout the body before they act in cells. They then pass from the blood into the cells of the tissues where the drug action occurs.
Only a few drugs, such as eye drops, local anesthetics and nasal sprays, act before entering the bloodstream. By the time these drugs eventually enter the blood, the amount is usually too small to produce additional effects on the cells.
Almost all drugs create their effects by altering the speed of cell activities. Also, most drugs used to affect one part of the body also affect other parts.