ABSTRACT
Scheuplein wrote these words in 1977, reviewing a decade’s work on the effects of solvents and surfactants on permeation. The interaction between stratum corneum hydration and permeation had been explored in a series of articles by Blank et al. (2-3), Feldman and Maibach (4), and Scheuplein (5). However, the first systematic report of using an exogenous chemical to enhance flux through human skin appeared in 1964 in a series of papers from Stoughton and Fritsch (6), Horita and Weber (7), and Jacob et al. (8), employing dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). Some 40 years and over 2000 research articles later, DMSO is still being used in research laboratories to enhance transdermal drug delivery (9).
