Chinese Terracotta Warriors
28 How Paul Janssen’s Drugs Saved the CCHHIINNEESSEE TTEERRRRAACCOOTTTTAA WWAARRRRIIOORRSS Rebecca J. Anderson The Chinese Terracotta Army, dating from approximately the late third century BCE, was discovered on March 29, 1974 to the east of Xi’an in Shaanxi Province, China. Photo: Shutterstock The Pharmacologist • March 2015 29 Chinese museum officials gazed with dismay at their Janssen label (3). These included repackaging and priceless army of ancient statues. For 22 centuries, the distributing generic penicillin and sulfonamides, which terracotta warriors had been protected and preserved in the were increasingly in demand after the war. Paul’s mother, soil of China’s Yellow River valley (1). Now, less than 20 Margriet Fleerakers, served as office manager and also years after these old soldiers emerged from their supervised the production line, including quality control (3). subterranean fortress, many of them had become infected Paul finished high school in 1943. To avoid forced and were suffering from a mysterious rash (2). Local labor in the German factories, he secretly enrolled in archeologists suspected the warriors’ moldy rash was due to college (at the age of 16) with the help of his uncle, Emiel fungi, but they lacked specialized laboratory equipment and Janssen (3). The 12 Jesuit teachers at the Faculté Notre- had only limited expertise to diagnose and treat the ailment. Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium, offered intensive The detective who stepped forward to solve this courses in physics, biology, philosophy, and chemistry to a mystery and thwart an archeological catastrophe was an handful of students, including Paul, without the knowledge unlikely hero: a businessman, physician, and scientist who of the German occupiers (2, 3).
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