Q 01/05

Oseltamivir, sold as Tamiflu, was first made from shikimic acid extracted from which Chinese spice?

A) Star anise

B) Sichuan pepper

C) Cassia bark

D) Galangal

Answer · why

A) Star anise

Star anise at first supplied all of Tamiflu's shikimic acid, and its low yield was blamed for the drug's 2005 shortage until engineered E. coli began ...

Q 02/05

Which flower, screened in the 1950s as a diabetes remedy, instead yielded the cancer drugs vinblastine and vincristine?

A) Evening primrose

B) Madagascar periwinkle

C) Autumn crocus

D) Mexican marigold

Answer · why

B) Madagascar periwinkle

Madagascar periwinkle extract barely moved lab animals' blood sugar but wiped out their white blood cells, the clue that led Canadian researchers to t...

Q 03/05

Which cocktail began with British officers in the Raj making their bitter daily antimalarial quinine more palatable?

A) Whisky sour

B) Pimm's cup

C) Gin and tonic

D) Pink gin

Answer · why

C) Gin and tonic

Gin and tonic lost its medical point long ago: US rules cap tonic water's quinine at 83 parts per million, far below the dose once taken against malar...

Q 04/05

Which opium-derived drug did Bayer sell from 1898 as a 'non-addictive' morphine substitute and cough suppressant?

A) Heroin

B) Laudanum

C) Paregoric

D) Methadone

Answer · why

A) Heroin

Heroin is said to take its trade name from the German heroisch, 'heroic', and it soon proved far more addictive than Bayer's advertising promised.

Q 05/05

Which South American arrow poison did Montreal anaesthetists give a surgical patient as a muscle relaxant in 1942?

A) Strychnine

B) Curare

C) Aconite

D) Ouabain

Answer · why

B) Curare

Curare let Harold Griffith and Enid Johnson relax a patient's muscles during an appendectomy on 23 January 1942, and its main alkaloid is still called...