The alkylating agents that worked against certain cancers were valuable tools, but the new drugs could not treat all the different types of cancer that affected humans; in fact, early clinical trials showed that even patients with the same type of cancer would not all respond well to the drugs they were given. Still, in the 1940s, heartened by their early success, scientists began reexamining older herbal treatments and breaking new ground by synthesizing new chemicals based on modern principles. The goal was to examine every possible solution, and the fruits of these scientists' labor proved to be priceless.

Vitamin Therapy

While Gilman, Goodman, and Philips focused on altering poisons to fight cancer, other scientists took a variety of different approaches. One of these scientists was Sidney Farber, who was a pathologist at Children's Hospital in Boston in the mid-1940s. Farber thought an...