ABSTRACT
The story of a drug from its beginnings to the time the drug is prescribed by physicians at large is always interesting. Many nuances simply cannot be gleaned from the literature. There are the usual difficulties with the objectivity with which one recalls events and the usual bias as to who first played an important role. Even though ancient peoples in both the Arab world and India used plant extracts that contained psoralens to treat patients with vitiligo, from the practical standpoint, the use of the psoralens had its beginnings in Egypt, This modern era began in the mid 1940s with the work of seven Egyptians in chemistry, pharmacology, and dermatology. L. Musajo at the University of Padua in 1965 was the first to report that the psoralens reacted with DNA. In the ensuing 20 years, it has been shown that the psoralens form cross-links with the complementary strands of DNA and thereby retard cell division.
