“I soon learned that it did not require a great brain to do original research."
Julius Axelrod
Despite earning a degree in biology, American biochemist Julius Axelrod (1912-2004) was rejected from all the medical schools he applied to and so got a laboratory technician job in New York's public health department, looking at vitamins in food. He attended night school to get a master's degree in science in 1942, then worked under scientist Bernard Brodie (1909-1989) at Goldwater Memorial Hospital in 1946.
During the 1940s the use of nonaspirin-based pain analgesics was being linked to the blood-poisoning condition methemoglobinemia. Axelrod and Brodie wanted to find out why Their detailed research found acetanilde, the main ingredient in many of these products, degraded into the blood toxin aniline. They suggested this was the most likely cause. They also discovered that one of its breakdown products also worked to kill pain in the same way as acetanilde.
In a 1948 paper they discussed the idea that this product, acetaminophen or paracetamol (Tyienol) as it became known, could be used as an alternative to acetanilde. From the 1950s it was being recommended as safer than aspirin and marketed in preparations for children. Today it is widely used to relieve pain, headache, fever, symptoms of common viral conditions like colds and influenza, as well as period, joint, and dental paih. Acetaminophen has few side effects and reacts with few other drugs.
