Word: neomycin
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Theoretically, modern medicine might be called the "age of antibiotics." Actually, the new wonder drugs (like neomycin, see below) have been comparatively scarce and expensive because they had to be grown, slowly and tediously, from molds. Last week Detroit's Parke, Davis & Co. made a dramatic announcement: the first practical synthetic production of an important antibiotic, chloromycetin. The process means that chloromycetin will be quickly and cheaply available for any doctor. It may also point the way to mass production of other antibiotics...
Last week Scientist Waksman (Ph.D. University of California) announced a new, promising, greyish-colored antibiotic which he called neomycin. Like streptomycin, it is derived from actinomycetes. a group of tiny organisms that are in a twilight evolutionary zone between molds and bacteria. The first preliminary tests made since it was developed last summer look good; it may, eventually, prove better than streptomycin. Dr. Waksman and Hubert A. Lechevalier, a graduate student who worked with him, reported their discovery in Science...
...Golden Bug. In the test tube, neomycin worked against strains of tuberculosis bacilli which might become resistant to streptomycin (i.e., learn how to flourish alongside streptomycin). The bacilli did not become resistant to neomycin as they had to the older drug. Tests with animals are not yet complete, because there has not been enough of the stuff to work with. But in mice and on embryos from chicken eggs it worked against Staphylococcus aureus (the "golden bug" which causes boils and abscesses) and against Salmonella schottmülleri (which causes a kind of paratyphoid fever). One bug is affected...