How was amphetamine invented?
In the late 1920's there was an enterprising biochemist in California named Gordon Alles who was interested in hormones. He had been trained at the highest level in pharmacology and biochemistry of his day, but wasn't able to get an academic job, which was his great ambition at the time when he was young. The Great Depression made it hard for him to get a job. Anyway, he worked in an allergist office making pollen shots and so on. And because it was an allergist office, there was of course great interest in ephedrine. And on the side, with the approval of George Piness, which was the name of the allergist, he started synthesizing drugs that were related to adrenaline and to ephedrine. And one he discovered in 1929 is the molecule we now call amphetamine. And he took an injection of it - 50 milligrams, quite a large dose by today's standards, not huge - with a doctor friend in June 1929. And although he's looking for decongestant effects and so on, because it was an ephedrine substitute, he did immediately notice his mind was racing and so on, and his blood pressure went way up, which was a bit of an issue.
