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The nineteenth century
Published in Michael J. O’Dowd, The History of Medications for Women, 2020
The word ‘iodine’ was derived from the Greek ioeides, violet-colored, (in turn from ion, a violet, and eidos, form). Iodine is a halogen element (atomic number 53), discovered by Bernard Courtois of France in 1811. At the time he was experimenting with the extraction of alkali from seaweed, while manufacturing artificial niter. He accidentally added a little too much sulfuric acid to the crystallized soda and ‘[he] was surprised to see beautiful violet vapours disengaged, and from these, scales of grayish-black colour, and of metallic lustre were deposited’ (Wootton, 1910 vol. pp. 351–3). Joseph Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy began experimenting with the new substance and in 1813 Davy recognized iodine as a simple element, and named it. Thomas Prosser (1769) was the first to record the use of powdered sponge for the cure of bronchocele or Derby neck (goiter). Jean François Coindet of Geneva, an Edinburgh graduate, suspected that iodine was the active constituent of burnt sponge, much prescribed empirically in the treatment of goiter. He proved his theory and became the first physician to use iodine in treatment (Coindet, 1820). Further studies on the value of iodine in the treatment of goiter were carried out between 1895 and 1923.
Hope Amid Uncertainty: 1950 to 2000
Published in John K. Crellin, A Social History of Medicines in the Twentieth Century, 2020
In turning now to public questioning of over-the-counter rather than prescription medicines, the story of the inexorable, albeit slow, "reform" during the first half of the twentieth century is continued. A new phase began in the 1960s, most dramatically in the United States. The 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments to the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act placed emphasis not only on proof of safety, but also on efficacy of both prescription-only and over-the-counter preparations. This included older products marketed since 1938. In consequence, the FDA created seventeen expert panels in 1972, each to review a particular category (e.g., antacids, hemorrhoid treatments, laxatives) of the vast number of over-the-counter products on the market. The protracted review determined those that were "safe and effective" and those that were not—categories I and II respectively; Category III included those on which more data were required. In sending hundreds of products into oblivion, reformulation, and relabeling, choices for the public were obviously reduced "by science," often causing irritations if not frustrations.152 In the United States, for instance, elderly Mr. Browns or Ms. Smiths might have regretted that, after 1980, they could no longer buy sweet spirits of niter, which they may have used as a home remedy since childhood for fevers and self-diagnosed kidney problems.153
Multiple Imputation
Published in Craig Mallinckrodt, Geert Molenberghs, Ilya Lipkovich, Bohdana Ratitch, Estimands, Estimators and Sensitivity Analysis in Clinical Trials, 2019
Craig Mallinckrodt, Geert Molenberghs, Ilya Lipkovich, Bohdana Ratitch
The top panel (a) of Code Fragment 19.4 (Section 19.8) provides an example of PROC MI code for imputation from a multivariate normal distribution using MCMC. Missing values are imputed from a single chain of the MCMC algorithm. Recall that MCMC samples converge to the target posterior distribution as the number of samples becomes large. Therefore, initial samples are skipped to ensure that the draws occur sufficiently close to the target distribution. This skipping is specified in the number of burn-in iterations (NBITER=200). Also because of serial correlation in sampled values within the same chain, a thinning period is specified as the number of iterations between imputations in a chain. In the example NITER=100 and PROC MI skip 100 samples after each imputation. The values NBITER=200 and NITER=100 are defaults that would be used if these options are omitted but are explicitly specified here for illustration.
History of asthma in Canada
Published in Canadian Journal of Respiratory, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, 2022
Asthma treatments in the 19th century were rudimentary at best. Bronchodilator agents were available in herbal remedies including Ma Huang, an oral Chinese remedy containing ephedrine and used for more than 2,000 years, and an inhaled (cigarettes and burning powders) South Asian remedy, Datura Stramonium-containing belladonna (anticholinergic) alkaloids, brought from India to Britain around 1800. The former is not mentioned in Osler’s texts while the latter received passing mention.37,38 Atropine38 and pilocarpine,37 both anti-muscarinic, are mentioned. Other than that, treatments were symptomatic and include many agents that are currently considered absolutely or relatively contraindicated in the management of asthma. Drugs used acutely included morphine, cocaine, chloral hydrate, inhaled amyl nitrate, inhaled chloroform, inhaled ether, burning niter paper,37,38 tobacco smoking38 and strychnine.38 Chronic management included particular attention to diet and changing the environment (trial and error appears to have been the major method) along with potassium iodide and occasionally arsenic.38