Word: streptomycinate
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...wonder drug, streptomycin, was at last ready for general distribution among 1,600 U.S. hospitals. Last week the Civilian Production Administration, the drug's custodian, announced that current production (about 140,000 grams a month) would meet all demand-except for treatment of tuberculosis...
...bacillus as "the greatest contribution to TB research since Robert Koch first isolated the germ itself in 1882" is, to say the least, a gross exaggeration. There have been many great achievements in the field of tuberculosis since the time of Koch. Thus, the therapeutic possibilities of sulfones and streptomycin, as well as the studies of immunization with BCG, are discussed in the very same issue of your magazine; you could also have mentioned, among other lines of progress, the improvement of X-ray methods of diagnosis, the campaign for the detection of early cases, the growth of sanatoria...
...bacterial diseases before them, a dark thunderhead of rumor appeared on the horizon-the germs were rallying and fighting back. All over the U.S., bacteriologists studied the phenomenon, and by last week the rumors were well confirmed. Within a few years, ventured Dr. Hans Molitor, penicillin and streptomycin may lose much of their power to cure some of the most prevalent diseases. No alarmist, Dr. Molitor should know what he is talking about: as director of the Merck Institute, he was a pioneer in the development of antibiotics...
...Streptomycin is slightly toxic (but no more so than the sulfa drugs, which do not halt TB) and makes patients rather dizzy. Though it suppresses the disease, it does not actually kill the germs. Patients who are taken off the drug do not continue to improve, sometimes relapse...
...Hinshaw's great fear: that thousands of TB victims will beg for treatment at once, that thousands more will postpone urgently needed therapy in the expectation that streptomycin will cure them day after tomorrow. It will not-for the drug, a distant relative of penicillin, is exceedingly scarce (cost: $24 to $50 a patient a day), and the results, however promising, do not yet warrant its widespread use. Dr. Hinshaw's great hope: that a better, cheaper drug will soon appear...