MEDICINE’S GOLDEN DECADE
Daring explorers of medical science are passing through a golden decade of discovery in healing.
Hippocrates, the medical Columbus of his time, would be proud of hie modern disciples, who cure
the "incurable" with penicillin and sulfa drugs, conquer burns and shock with blood plasma, arrest can
cer, dose whole armies with vaccines to ward off epidemics, or shock the mentally ill back toward health.
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FLEMING: He found penicillin moldering in a mold.
&
By SCHUYLER ALLMAN
(/P) Features Writer
FIRST OF A SERIES
A hard-boiled commuity of
germs trying to plant a colony on
a culture plate in London’s St.
Mary’s hospital fell on evil times.
The germs did not multiply and
overrun the plate with their usual
arrogance.
So Dr. Alexander Fleming, Lon
don bacteriologist, went looking
lor the agent that was cutting
down the staphylococci on the mi
croscopic battlefield. He found it j
I
DOMAGK: Sulfa Discoyarar. |
lurking in a common mold that
had strayed onto the plate.
Dr. Fleming filtered a liquid
from the mold, called it penicillin,
tried it on animals and modestly
reported that it “may be an effec
tive anticeptic.” This was in 1929.
But nothing happened for ten
years.
Wild Bacteria Tamed
Then came war crying for anti
septics. D . Howard W. Florey and
associates at the University of
Oxford undertook further study
of penicillin and in 1940 published
a report that startled the medical
world.
Converted into a brown pow
der, this penicillin had stopped
certain streptococci and staphylo
cocci dead in their tracks. Some
of these wild bacteria never had
been tamed before.
Few outside the armed services
know penicillin’s curative powers,
for so well does it fight stubborn
wound and other infections that
they have first call on the limited
supply.
Penicillin, unstable product of
Penicillium notatum—a common
mold found in fertile soil—is slow
and painfully refined.
But in laboratories chemists toil
to split it into its eU 'ients. If they
succeed, penicillin then can be
made synthetically and will be
CLOTHES STRAIN
Just in the course of a man’s everyday activities
his clothes take such a beating they often become
shapeless and baggy long before they wear out
Let us restore their original sparkle and shape
liness.
The collar always fits snugly — the lapels al
ways roll softly — the whole garment restored to
its original unbroken smartness.
MODERN CLEANERS
(Modem Opening b CWhn
available to all to fight many an
cient destroyers of mankind.
Sulfanilamide also knocked
about the laboratories unhonored
for years. It was discovered in
1906, but it was not until 1932 that
a curious German scientist, Dr.
Gerhard Domagk, discovered that
a dye containing the drug kept a
cutthroat gang of streptococci
germs from multiplying.
Here was a new approach to an
old problem. Previously, scient
ists had been looking without
much luck for something to kill
I germs in the blood stream. Sulfa
didn’t kill germs, but it did hold
them in check so the body’s natu
ral defenses could handle them
(also true of penicillin.)
Tentative reports on the drug
filtered from Germany late in
1934, Dr. Domagk reported in
1935 that it would cure strep in
fections, and research was after it
in full cry when news spread *hat
sulfa was saving women from
lethal child bed fever in a London
hospital.
The drug has been greatly re
fined since. Search for a sulfona
mide that cures without bad after
effects only recently produced |
sulfamenthazine, one of the most I
promising of this great drug fam
ily.
It has been used successfully
and with little toxic reaction in
pneumonia, meningitis and gonor
rhea. Another is sulfamerazine.
Doctors have written a remark
able record of saving wounded by
applying powdered sulfas directly
to wounds and administering he
drugs internally.
Yet the sulfonamide surface has
hardly been scratched, and many
problems remain.
(Next: Sex Treatments for Cancer)
Hiram Johnson,
79, Dies In
Washington
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6—(/P)—
Senator Hiram W. Johnson, Cali
fornia, militant opponent ct th#
League of Nations and the San
Francisco Charter for United Na
tions, died today at seventy-nine.
The veteran Republican suc
cumber at the Naval Hospital to
cerebral thrombosis after two
and a half week’s hospitalization.
Fisheries Commission
Reviews Progress
In Seattle
SEATTLE, Aug. 5— (JP) —The
Pacific-Salmon Fisheries Com
mission here Thursday, Friday
and Saturday will review the
progress of the efforts to restore
the red salmon run to northwest
i
waters.
Surplus Gov’t
B ildings
FOR SALE
The Alaskan Department, U. S. Army Is
offering for sale certain surplus huts and
frame buildings located in the Nome area.
The sale will be conducted on a negotiated
cash basis with individual needs and require
ments being first served.
The base price set on huts approximates
$200.00, while the portable frame-type struc
tures will average 35 to 60 cents a sq. ft.
of floor space* These figures are subject to
reduction or increase dependent upon con
dition of buildings or amount of improve
ments and installed equipment.
The Real Estate Representative of the Alaskan
Department is located at the M. P. Station on
Front Street and will furnish all further details,
forms and related information between the
hours of 9 to 12 noon, 1 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m.,
except on Sundays when hours will be 10 to 2.