Word: penicillins
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Doctors who had been prescribing penicillin as casually as aspirin were suddenly socked in the midriff. The'reason: real knowledge about penicillin is pitifully small...
Unlike the finding of penicillin itself (TIME, May 15, 1944), the discovery of this fact was no accident. Three months ago two researchers discovered something that raised the eyebrows of penicillin experts, set them to rechecking furiously. Worried, they spot-checked hundreds of recently treated syphilis cases. The result was alarming: penicillin was apparently losing its wallop...
Last week, before the National Academy of Sciences, Johns Hopkins' crack syphilologist, Dr. Joseph Earle Moore, trotted into the open a meager collection of recently discovered facts about penicillin (until now blanketed by wartime security): 1) instead of only one type of penicillin, there are at least four (arbitrarily named G, F, X, K); 2) type K is virtually useless because it is destroyed within the body so fast (in less than an hour) that it can't get set for a knockout punch at the germs. In trying to produce a purer form of penicillin, drug companies...
Great Unknowns. Moore was not worried about relapses among patients treated with K-spiked penicillin. In all except syphilis cases, doses are so large that other types present quell bacteria; type K can be forgotten. If syphilis cases follow instructions (to report for regular checkups), any relapses will be nipped...
THENARDOL, a new antiseptic for which the base is common household hydrogen peroxide, can be sprayed, inhaled, given to patients allergic to sulfa drugs or penicillin. Developed by Dr. Ethan Allan Brown of Boston, thenardol is super-safe, non-allergy-causing...