1942

Birth of chemotherapy by Goodman and Gilman: Nitrogen mustard, synthesized from mustard gas, is delivered intravenously to cancer patients, achieving its most dramatic effects with those with Hodgkin’s disease. Almost every patient with Hodgkin’s disease responded, some dramatically, to the nitrogen mustard, but the effects lasted seven months at most, as the toxicity of the drug led to severe nausea and vomiting, followed by injury to bone marrow, resulting in falling white cell counts and decreased platelet counts. Within a month, however, bone marrow was repopulated with normal cells. The result: Physicians “could infuse nitrogen mustard intermittently for months, and patients dying of Hodgkin’s disease gained six or eight more months of life.” These results of nitrogen mustard treatment were only published at War’s end in August 1945 (C. Jacobs, 81-85, quoted at 85).