Word: mapharsen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Syphilis. The one-day syphilis cure-again for new infections only-combines: 1) single massive doses of mapharsen (an organic arsenic compound); 2) a ten-hour fever (106° F.) artificially induced by hot humid air while the patient lies in a coffinlike cabinet developed in part by General Motors Research Director Charles Kettering. By increasing the body's tolerance for arsenic, the fever enables doctors to compress the recently developed five-to ten-day treatment (without fever) into...
...Best drug for early syphilis is still old 606 (arsphenamine), combined with bismuth, though the simpler mapharsen may ultimately replace 606. In comparison, the time-honored mercury is not much good. The first three injections must be given within ten days; the rest once a week for several years. After the first injection a patient becomes temporarily noninfectious. But Dr. Moore warned doctors against the common practice of sporadic injections; once started, treatment must be continued, for in early syphilis a little "may be worse than none." Reason: if no drugs are given, the body proceeds with its strong defenses...
...ordinary fluid, but a sugary solution of mapharsen, one of the earlier of the 950-odd arsenic compounds invented by Paul Ehrlich. While the drug gently seeped into the patient's veins (two drops every three seconds), young Dr. William Leifer explained to the visitors one of the most remarkable advances in the treatment of syphilis since Chemist Ehrlich discovered arsphenamine...
...slowly dripping its weaker relative, mapharsen, into the bloodstream for eight hours a day, Drs. Hyman and Leifer and the third associate, Dr. Louis Chargin, eliminate the "shock" of relatively large injections, build up blood tolerance to huge concentrations of the essential arsenic. During a five-day treatment, a patient absorbs about two and a half gallons of mapharsen solution...
...doctors first tried neoarsphenamine in their Murphy drip, but found it "too dangerous." Mapharsen, which is less toxic, was discarded by Ehrlich because it was too unstable. But modern chemists have "set" the drug...
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