Small molecule drug discovery modifications

Of the nineteenth-century s applied-medicine contributions, rational explanation of infectious disease and hence clean practice, and chemistry, were probably the most notable contributions, including extraction, purification, and even chemical synthesis. Nineteenth- (and twentieth-) century chemistry was preoccupied with discovery and characterization of small molecules of natural origin that were therefore almost always carbon based (as well as later flexing its muscles at some synthesis or simply modification of these natural carbon compounds). In the later nineteenth century, chemistry allowed the development of stains for the specimens on microscopic slides, disinfectants like phenol, and anesthetics like chloroform. Above all, however, it was the development of the roots of pharmaceutical chemistry in which nineteenth-century chemistry revealed its most sophisticated hand, even though the actual application to making real drugs was not really to materialize fully until the twentieth century. 

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