Invent A Use For

I don't have a creative lead-in for this, so I'll just get to it.

I think the guy that invented fire is noteworthy, but personally I'm more impressed by the people that figured out what to do with it.  The guy that stumbled onto fire likely did so by accident.  The person that said, "hey, maybe our food would be better if we stuck it in this fire" was the real inventive one.  And the person that said, "we can use fire to melt metal and make better weapons", well played.

On a similar note, how do scientists know what medicine works on what illness?  I mean, anyone can mash up plant leaves and create 'drugs', but how did scientists come to realize that some drug whose name I can't pronounce, none-the-less spell, fights some disease I can't pronounce?

Discovery is cool, but it's how we use those discoveries that's the real invention.