We Don't Know How Tylenol Works

Tylenol has been sold since 1955, but its history goes back much further. The underlying medicine's fever-reducing talent was discovered purely by accident, and I mean an accident at a pharmacy that could have been much, much worse. But it worked, not only to reduce fever, but to squelch pain as well. Testing has deemed it safe and effective, but scientists still don't know the exact mechanism of that effectiveness. It's possible that we might never know, because there are much more important problems than the exact mechanism of a drug that's already safe and effective. This video from Half as Interesting is a minute shorter than it looks, because that last part is an ad.