History
Before the invention of the MDI asthma medication was delivered using a squeeze bulb nebulizer which was fragile and unreliable. The relatively crude nature of these devices also meant that the particles that they generated were relatively large, too large for effective drug delivery to the lungs. Nonetheless these nebulisers paved the way for inhaltion drug delivery providing the inspiration for the MDI.
MDI's were first developed in 1955 by Riker Laboratories, now a subsidiary of 3M Healthcare. At that time MDI's represented a convergence of two relatively new technologies, the CFC propellant and the Meshburg metering valve which was originally designed for dispensing perfume. The initial design by Riker used a glass canister coated with a vinyl plastic to improve its resilience. By 1956 Riker had developed two MDI based products, the Medihaler-Ept containing epinephrin and the Medihaler-Iso containing Isoprenaline. Both products are agonists which provide short term relief from asthma symptoms and have now largely been replaced in asthma treatment by salbutamol which is more selective.
Read more about this topic: Metered-dose Inhaler
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)