Gerhard Domagk’s (Pasteur’s intellectual heir) daughter, Hildegard, stabbed a needle in her hand when she fell down the stairs. The wound became infected, and she risked amputation of her arm. Her father, Gerhard, had already tested Prontosil, a reddish compound with sulfur, on mice. After much hesitation, he injected it into his daughter. Her condition initially worsened, but after a few weeks, stabilized, and then recovered. It was the first antibacterial. Sulfur shares one electron with benzene, one with nitrogen atoms, and two with oxygen atoms, for a total of six bonds with 12 particles. Prontosil was initially unsuccessful, until it saved Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s life in 1936. Prontosil was thus featured in the New York Times, and sales skyrocketed. The human body splits prontosil in two to produce sulfonamide, which interferes with the synthesis of folic acid, essential for cell replication, especially in bacteria. Sulfonamides were born. For this, Domagk received the Nobel Prize in 1939. Domagk was employed by the German company IGF (which later produced the Zyklon-B used to exterminate inmates in the extermination camps).
