Word: spinal
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Year after year Dr. Rosenow has published painstaking research papers showing how he: 1) invariably finds a certain kind of streptococci in brains and spinal fluid of animal and human poliomyelitis victims; 2) finds the same germs in milk, water and the throats of about 33% of well people during polio epidemics; 3) finds very few of the germs between epidemics; 4) makes a streptococcus serum that protects animals from poliomyelitis...
...that the company had distributed some 22,000 packages of improperly distilled water and 73,000 ampoules of dextrose solution (which is made with distilled water) containing pyrogens (fever-producing substances), "undissolved particles" and mold. Patients showed "unusual symptoms" when a Boston hospital used some of the dextrose in spinal anesthesia. According to an Assistant U.S. Attorney one patient died, but the doctors think he would have died anyway. Winthrop called in all the offending packages long...
...impatient sufferers (many of them dying), the good news came none too soon. Penicillin (sometimes rhymes with villain, sometimes with whistle in) is the best treatment for all staphylococcic infections, all hemolytic streptococcic infections, clostridia infections, pneumococcic infections (of the lining of skull, spinal cord, lung and heart surfaces), pneumococcic pneumonia that sulfa drugs will not cure, all gonococcic infections (including all gonorrhea that sulfa drugs will not cure). Diseases against which penicillin is effective but not fully tested: syphilis, actinomycosis, bacterial endocarditis...
...typical case (a child under two), Dr. Alexander estimates the severity of the infection by measuring the sugar and chloride in the patient's spinal fluid. If the level is low, the infection is severe. Treatment begins with an injection of sulfadiazine and a continuous slow drip of salt solution into a vein. After the drip has gone on for about four hours, a measured amount of the special rabbit serum is put into the reservoir of weak salt solution. The amount used depends on the amount of infection. All the serum is given in two hours...
Next day the spinal fluid is tested again. If sugar and chlorides have come up to normal (they usually do in that time), the serum dose need not be repeated. After that, blood tests and sulfadiazine by mouth go on for a week, just in case...