I was reading earlier that Aspirin was the go-to medicine for the Spanish Flu.
If modern medicines were available back then - millions of lives would have been saved.
Modern medicine was in its infancy in 1918. Other than antiseptics, there were very few *effective* medicines. Opium, quinine, cocaine, and heroin were all available over-the-counter. Arsenic-based syphilis treatments like salvarsan were recently introduced. Vitamins were a new discovery.
Paracetamol (Tylenol) was first synthesized by an American chemist in 1877. Disputes about safety prevented it’s use for about eighty years, until a second look revealed that the accepted drugs of a similar chemical lineage actually served as precursors, which the body’s metabolism transformed into the active para-acetylaminophenol.
It was determined that contamination of materials used in testing the efficacy and safety of the then new painkiller, were most likely the culprit in painting a picture of side effects, toxicity, and carcinogenicity. If not for these missteps, the medication could have been made available nearly two decades before the introduction of aspirin to the market in the late 19th century.