The English physician James LeFanu came up with the following list of medicial breakthroughs that changed society in his book "The rise and fall of modern medicine".

1941 Penicillin (bacterial infections)
1949 Cortisone (sterile infections)
1950 Streptomycin, smoking (epidemiology / trials)
1952 Chlorpromazine (psychiatry)
1955 Open-heart surgery
1963 Kidney transplantation
1964 Strokes (prevention)
1971 Healing childhood leukemia
1978 Test tube baby
1984 Helicobacter (ulcers)

In nine of these 10 breakthroughs, medicines were essential.. And even open-heart surgery is not possible without anesthesia drugs. So, without exaggeration it can be stated that medicines have changed society dramatically. But science has changed as well, according to this summary of Nobel prizes for drug research:

Von Behring, diphtheria antitoxin (1901)
Fischer, lock-and-key (1902)
Koch, bacteriology (1905)
Ehrlich, salvarsan/syphilis (1908)
Banting/Macleod, insulin/diabetes (1923)
Wagner/Jauregg, malaria/fever (1928)
Windaus, vitamin D/rachitis (1928)
Eijkman, vitamin B1/beri-beri (1929)
Haworth, vitamin C (1937)
Domagk, prontosil rubrum/antibacterial (1939)
Fleming/Chain/Florey, penicillin/antibacterial (1945)
Kendall/Reichstein/Hench, cortisone/inflammation (1950)
Waksman, streptomycin/TB (1952)
Du Vigneaud, oxytocin/childbirth, vasopressin/diuresis (1955)
Bovet, tubocurarine/nervous system, sulfanilamide/antibacterial, mepyramine/antihistaminic (1957)
Sanger, insulin structure (1958)
Woodward, quinine/malaria, estrone/conception (1965)
Huggins, estrogen/prostate cancer (1966)
Edelman/Porter, antibodies (1972)
Bergstrom/Samuelsson/Vane, prostaglandins/inflammation (1982)
Jerne/Kohler/Millstein, antibody production (1984)
Hitchings, thioguanine/cancer, 6-mercaptopurine/cancer (1988)
Elion, azathioprine/immunosuppression, pyrimethamine/malaria (1988)
Black, propranolol/hypertension, cimetidine/heartburn (1988)
Marshall, H. pylori/heartburn (2005)
Fire/Mello, RNAi (2006)
Hausen, HPV vaccine (2008)
Lefkowitz, Kobilka, GPCRs/hypertension (2012)
Gurdon/Yamanaka, iPSC (2012)
Campbell/Omura, ivermectin/antiparasitic (2015)
Tu, artemisinin/malaria (2015)
Arnold/Smith/Winter, directed evolution/phage display (2018)
Allison/Honjo, immuuntherapie (2018)
Alter/Houghton/Rice, hepatitis C virus (2020)
Charpentier/Doudna, metode voor gene editing (2020)

More information on these Nobel prizes can be found here.

More information?

This article briefly described the history of pharmacology in the Netherlands.

In memoriam dr. Jaap Wilting (1944-2021)

In memoriam dr. Jaap Wilting (1944-2021)