Publications on a drug before the first report of its administration to man

The early published literature on thirty drugs used clinically in humans was searched and ranked chronologically for each drug. The median number of papers appearing before the first report of a human's receiving the drug (the "first-human-paper," or FHP) was two. The median years that elapsed from the first paper until the FHP was one. No significant difference was evident in these respects between pharmacologic and antimicrobial drugs. About 90 percent of the time fewer than ten papers were published and fewer than seven years elapsed before the FHP.