Word: penicillins
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Before the last echoes of penicillin's wonder-working died away, a fresh piece of news set the echoes going again. Last week, through hospital corridors all over the U.S., the news was: penicillin may be effective against late syphilis. Doctors already knew that penicillin was effective against early syphilis (TIME, Oct. 25). But late syphilis is much more difficult to cope with...
Since last September, the Office of Scientific Research and Development has sponsored the use of penicillin on more than 1,000 syphilitics at all stages of the disease. Doses ranged up to 4,000,000 units per patient. On the basis of these cases, Dr. Joseph Earle Moore told the Association of American Physicians (see p. 44): "Penicillin has a profound immediate effect on syphilis of all types, early or late." He cautioned them that it may be years before anyone can say whether the drug actually cures late stages of the disease...
Doctors now know in general which diseases penicillin helps, have worked out a tentative schedule of dosage. Present consensus is that 40,000 to 120,000 units daily, given gradually by vein or intramuscular injection for about a week, should cure the average case with a systemic infection. Treatment for gonorrhea is usually much shorter; treatment for subacute bacterial endocarditis, much longer. For application to wounds, about 50,000 units in salt solution is used, varying with the size of the wound...
...Penicillin seems to cure most of the bacterial diseases that the sulfa drugs cure and cures them more quickly, effectively and less dangerously. It also seems to be a quick cure of early syphilis-the first safe and effective drug to kill the spirochete. Sulfa drugs are not effective against syphilis. But penicillin will not entirely supplant sulfa drugs. The sulfa drugs are still necessary for: 1) intestinal infections (penicillin is destroyed in the digestive tract); 2) bacillus coll infections of the urinary tract (penicillin does not attack b. coli); 3) as prophylactics in epidemics of certain diseases like meningitis...
Only a Beginning. Penicillin is already big business, yet Dr. Fleming (who discovered it) and Dr. Florey (who made it tick) have got nothing out of it but praise-doctors generally do not patent drugs. Penicillin will save more lives than war spends, but there has been no military citation. Most tangible recognition so far was the Award of Merit of the American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association given to Drs. Fleming & Florey last December. Several months ago, a proposal to give Dr. Fleming a grant from the public funds was brought up in Parliament, but nothing came...