Testing the Waters: Lessons from the History of Drug Research

by Allan Gaw

TESTING THE WATERS
Lessons from the History of Drug Research

What can we learn from the past that may be relevant to modern drug research?
In this book Allan Gaw shows us how the past can illuminate the present and help us understand where we are and how we have come to be here.

We will start in a world, more than two thousand years ago, long before science, but where highly disciplined minds could still formulate rigorous strategies for the evaluation of new drugs. We will move forward to see the parts played by an Emperor’s physician in Ancient Rome, a Persian philosopher and a country doctor in England. We will visit the battlefields of Europe, the laboratory benches of a German drug company and see the parts played by serendipity and innovation in the development of new drugs. In the early 20th century we will see that tragedy can be the result of inadequate testing of medicines as well as being the catalyst for change. And, we will discover how the story of one sleeping tablet changed everything.

Allan Gaw, MD, PhD, FRCPath, FFPM, PGCert Med Ed is a Scottish writer and educator. He has been a clinical academic for over 25 years. Most recently, he was Professor & Director of the Clinical Research Facility at Queen’s University Belfast, and he previously worked at the University of Glasgow and UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas.

In addition to over 25 books, he also writes articles on a range of subjects and a blog entitled The Business of Discovery (researchet.wordpress.com). If you would like to learn more about him and his work, visit his website www.allangaw.com or follow him on twitter @ResearchET.

213 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 1, 2016

About the author

Allan Gaw is a Scot who lives and works near Glasgow. He studied medicine and is a pathologist by training but a writer by inclination. Having worked in the NHS and universities in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and the US, he now devotes his time to writing.

Most of his published work to date is non-fiction. These include medical textbooks and regular magazine articles on topics as diverse as the thalidomide story, the medical challenges of space travel and the medico-legal consequences of the Hillsborough disaster.

More recently, he has been writing short stories, poetry and novels. He won the UK Classical Association Creative Writing Competition, the International Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the International Globe Soup 7 day Writing Challenge and was runner-up in the Glencairn Glass/Bloody Scotland Short Crime Fiction Competition. He has also had prose published in the literary anthologies, From Glasgow to Saturn and anthologies and the Edinburgh Literary Salon.

His poetry has been published by Dreich, Soor Ploom Press, Black Bough Poetry, SCAP and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. His debut poetry collection, Love & Other Diseases, was published in 2023 by Seahorse Publications. His second poetry collection, The Sounds Men Make, was published in 2025, also by Seahorse.

His debut novel, The Silent House of Sleep, won the 2024 Bloody Scotland Debut novel of the year. His second novel, The Moon’s More Feeble Fire, was longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize The third book in the Dr Jack Cuthbert series, To the Shades Descend is out now and the fourth, The Shadows and the Dust, will be released in January 2026.

You can read more about him and his work at his website: https://researchet.wordpress.com