Word: streptomycinate
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This year (TIME, April 4), Dr. Waksman announced that he and an assistant, Hubert Lechevalier, had isolated another antibiotic from a soil microbe which Waksman named Streptomyces fradiae in honor of his mother. The drug, neomycin, is as effective as streptomycin against tubercle bacilli in the test tube, and Waksman hopes that it can be combined with streptomycin in treating tuberculosis...
There is need for such a combination because streptomycin, more than any other of the antibiotics, tends to develop resistant strains of germs. Some strains learn to live with it, even becoming dependent on it-as if a rat began to fatten on rat poison. The resistant strains can be highly dangerous; if they infect another victim, he cannot be cured by streptomycin or anything else yet known...
...already been used with success as a last desperate measure. Just before Labor Day, a fat but unhappy farmer was admitted to Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. He had a deep-seated infection caused by a common microbe, Aerobacter aerogenes, which is usually a pushover for penicillin or streptomycin...
...farmer's germs were a special strain. They had licked their weight in penicillin, and come back to knock out streptomycin, chloramphenicol and aureomycin. Unchecked, they were a sure bet to kill the farmer. Dr. Garfield G. Duncan pitted the tough germs in a test tube against neomycin. The drug murdered them...
While Waksman waits to set up his institute with streptomycin money, the search for better antibiotics goes on. The requirements for a new antibiotic seeking membership in the select club are getting stiffer all the time. Explains Waksman: to qualify, a new drug must kill some kinds of germs more effectively than any drug now known; it must work well in the body and not damage the body; it should be stable and soluble in water...