[3] In 1938, people including himself and H. Houston Merritt discovered phenytoin's usefulness for controlling seizures, without the sedative effects associated with phenobarbital.
According to Goodman and Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics: In contrast to the earlier accidental discovery of the antiseizure properties of potassium bromide and phenobarbital, phenytoin was the product of a search among nonsedative structural relatives of phenobarbital for agents capable of suppressing electroshock convulsions in laboratory animals.
[9][10] The study was conducted on the brain of a multiple sclerosis victim, and resulted in new information on how the disease affected the human body.
[11] Putnam was one of the first persons to propose, as early as the 1930s, a vascular cause for multiple sclerosis,[12] resurrecting the previous works of Eduard von Rindfleisch.
The idea remained obscure until the syndrome of chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) was associated with multiple sclerosis in 2008.