Word: acidity
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...bacteria fail to multiply, so that the blood's white corpuscles can easily destroy their limited numbers. How slight is the lethal error which the bacteria make is shown by the similar chemical names: sulfanilamide is para-amino-benzene-sulfonamide; the growth factor is para-amino-benzoic acid...
...Many bacteria need another B factor, pantothenic acid, to thrive. So Bacteriologist Henry McIlwain of Sheffield, England, reasoned that bacteria might likewise mistake a compound called pantoyltaurine for its chemical relative, pantothenic acid. His hunch was right, and his discovery may well lead to development of a second group of bacteria-hoaxing chemicals comparable to the sulfa-group...
...Since it is largely the similar acid properties of the sulfa-drugs and the bacterial vitamins which confuse the bacteria, Chemists Richard O. Roblin Jr. and Paul H. Bell (of the sulfa-making American Cyanamid Co.) have developed a method of measuring the acidity of the several hundred possible sulfa-compounds and thus 'predicting their efficacy. But such predictions are complicated by other factors: some sulfa-drugs are not absorbed by the body and thus never reach the blood stream; others undergo chemical changes in the body and thus lose their powers...
...watched his Hawaiian volunteer workers, Colonel Unmacht had his big idea. He told the women to fold back the corners of the sacks and stitch them up to resemble rabbit ears. Then he asked Hawaiian hospitals for old X-ray negatives washed clean with acid. The negatives made transparent plastic windows for the front of Colonel Unmacht's bunny masks. At latest reports Hawaiian moppets are so eager to play rabbit in the new masks that parents are being asked to keep all bunny masks laid safely away for a real emergency...
...contributing causes of tooth decay are not clearly understood, Hill admits. But it is certain that decay is usually associated with the presence in the mouth of swarms of bacteria, whose acid excretions etch away calcium from the teeth. These bacteria cannot live in human saliva unless sugar is present; and since sugar does not occur in normal saliva, they must get their nourishment from food taken into the mouth. Says Dr. Hill: "When diets are followed which contain a rigid restriction of sugar, these acid-forming organisms rapidly disappear from the saliva...