Costel’s Reviews > Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty > Status Update

Some people simply have addictive personalities. They can’t help themselves.

Heinrich Dreser, one of the German chemists at Bayer who is credited with inventing heroin, is rumoured to have become addicted to the drug himself and died of a stroke in 1924.

When a pharmaceutical company releases a new drug, they have a big launch meeting, which can seem like some unholy combination of a bachelor party, a marketing convention, and a revival meeting.

Initially, Librium was the most prescribed drug in America, until it was overtaken by Valium in 1968. But even then, Librium held on, remaining in the top five. Valium was the first $100 million drug in history, and Roche became not just the leading drug company in the world but one of the most profitable companies of any kind.

When Arthur was inducted into the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame, the citation would say, “ No single individual did more to shape the character of medical advertising than the multi-talented Dr. Arthur Sackler.” It was Arthur, the citation continued, who brought “the full power of advertising and promotion to pharmaceutical marketing.”

Terramycin was a new kind of antibiotic - a “broad spectrum” drug. The first antibiotics were so-called narrow spectrum, meaning that they were designed to address specific ailments. But new drugs were now being developed to treat an ever-wider range of maladies.

By the mid-1930s, more than 60 percent of applicants to American medical schools were Jewish, and this perceived imbalance prompted sharp restrictions. At home schools, such as Yale, applications from prospective students who happened to be Jewish were marked with an H, for “Hebrew.”