List of drugs by year of discovery

The Ebers Papyrus – one of the most important medical papyri of ancient Egypt – was written around 1550 BCE, and covers more than 700 drugs, mainly of plant origin.

[2] The papyri also describe how to prepare herbal teas, poultices, ointments, eye drops, suppositories, enemas, laxatives, etc.

[9] Seeds likely used for herbalism have been found in archaeological sites of Bronze Age China dating from the Shang dynasty[10] (c. 1600 BCE–c.

[13][14] Use of the opium poppy for medical, recreational, and religious purposes can be traced to the 4th century BCE, when Hippocrates wrote about it for its analgesic properties, stating, "Divinum opus est sedare dolores."

Pedanius Dioscorides wrote De Materia Medica (c. 40 – 90 CE); this book dominated the area of drug knowledge for some 1500 years until the 1600s.

Aelius Galenus wrote more than 11 books about drugs, also use terra sigillata with kaolinite and goats blood to produce tablets.

[citation needed] For over a thousand years South American indigenous peoples have chewed Erythroxylon coca leaves, which contain alkaloids such as cocaine.

[22] In 1569, Spanish botanist Nicolás Monardes described the indigenous peoples' practice of chewing a mixture of tobacco and coca leaves to induce "great contentment".

[citation needed] In 1747, James Lind, surgeon of HMS Salisbury, conducted the first clinical trial ever recorded, on it he studied how citrus fruit were capable of curing scurvy.

Amphetamine was first synthesized in 1887 in Germany by Romanian chemist Lazăr Edeleanu who named it phenylisopropylamine;[23][24][25] its stimulant effects remained unknown until 1927, when it was independently resynthesized by Gordon Alles and reported to have sympathomimetic properties.

[26] Three decades later, in 1919, methamphetamine hydrochloride was synthesized by pharmacologist Akira Ogata via reduction of ephedrine using red phosphorus and iodine.

In 1948 Raymond P. Ahlquist published his seminal work where he divided adrenoceptors into α- and β-adrenoceptor subtypes, this allowed a better understanding of drugs mechanisms of action.

In 2015 a simplified form of CRISPR edition was used in humans with Cas9, and also was used an even more simple method, Cas12a that prevent genetic damage from viruses.