Growing Hair

In the late 1970s, minoxidil, patented by Upjohn, was used to control high blood pressure. In 1980, Dr. Anthony Zappacosta mentioned in a letter published in The New England Journal of Medicine that one of his patients using minoxidil for high blood pressure was starting to grow hair on his nearly bald head. Dermatologists took note, and one — Dr. Virginia Fiedler-Weiss — crushed up some of the tablets and made a solution that some of her patients applied topically. It worked in enough cases that you now see Minoxidil as an over-thecounter hair-growth medicine.