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Cocaine was isolated in 1860 and first used as a local anesthetic in 1884. Its first clinical use was by Sigmund Freud to wean a patient from morphine addiction. The fictional character Sherlock Holmes was supposed to be addicted to cocaine by injection.
More than 2,500 barbiturates have been synthesized. At the height of their popularity, about 50 were marketed for human use.
Aspirin is the most widely used drug in the world. It has even been recognized as such by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Although puberty usually occurs in the early teenage years, the world's youngest parents were two Chinese children who had their first baby when they were 8 and 9 years of age.
On average, someone in the United States has a stroke about every 40 seconds. This is about 795,000 people per year.