Over-the-counter medicine, 1898. There are plenty of commercial medicines on the market.  Occasionally some medicines will get pulled due to certain side effects that no one saw coming.  One of these was developed as a painkiller, initially, known as diamorphine.  The English scientist who invented it couldn’t find a use for it, but about twenty years later, scientists at the German company Bayer developed diamorphine into a painkiller and cough suppressant, as well as an anti-anxiety drug.  Its benefit was that it was less addictive than morphine, which was usually what was used for those maladies (except for suppressing coughs).  The drug first hit the market in 1898, under the commercial name Heroin. This is the same heroin that’s such a problem today, but at the time, it was viewed as an effective, over-the-counter medicine.  It wasn’t until 1914 that the drug was even regulated in the United States.  After World War I, as part of th...