Word: sulfa
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Modern Treatment. Cholera, an infection of the digestive tract, kills chiefly by removing water from the body. The blood gets too thick to circulate, and death comes from "shock." Modern treatment knocks off the vibrios (comma-shaped, whiskery bacteria) with sulfa drugs, and dilutes the thickening blood with saline solution or serum. The vaccine has worked well. No one receiving two injections (cost: 3?) has yet got the disease; only one who has had a single shot has come down with...
UNRRA had only a tiny medical staff: about 600 doctors, 600 nurses, 60 sanitary engineers, 40 dentists. But it had plenty of miracle workers like DDT and penicillin. To trouble spots, UNRRA shipped: 7.5 million pounds of DDT powder, 809,550 million units of penicillin, one million pounds of sulfa drugs, six million cc of diphtheria toxoid, 5,167 million units of antitoxin. By 1946's end, UNRRA reported, typhoid, which had caused Europe's most serious postwar epidemic, was under control, diphtheria had been greatly reduced, typhus was rare, smallpox and plague had virtually been wiped...
Since then, said Dr. James Crabtree of the Public Health Service, immunization has laid diphtheria low. Better sanitation (including fewer flies because of fewer horses) has knocked intestinal infections, such as diarrhea and enteritis, off the top list. Sulfa drugs and penicillin have taken the edge off pneumonia. Tuberculosis has yielded somewhat to better treatment and early X-ray diagnosis. To take their places, non-germ diseases have moved up. Last year's list: 1) heart disease; 2) cancer; 3) cerebral hemorrhage; 4) nephritis; 5) pneumonia and influenza; 6) accidents (except motor vehicle); 7) tuberculosis; 8) diabetes; 9) premature...
Carville has had excellent results with three sulfa drugs: Promin, Diasone and Promizole (streptomycin, now under test, also looks promising). Last year the leprosarium discharged 37 patients, this year it will discharge 40 or more. Said its medical chief, Dr. Guy H. Faget: "The sulfones have stopped even the most hopeless cases in their tracks...
...Hope. The leaders in developing the new sulfa treatment were Dr. Faget and world-famed Leprologist George H. McCoy, head of Louisiana State University's preventive medicine department. (They long ago dropped the traditional chaulmoogra oil as worthless.) Because leprae bacilli are tough, and most of Carville's patients are in advanced stages of the disease, recovery is slow. But heavy daily injections of Promin (or doses of Diasone or Promizole pills) gradually clear out the bacilli, reduce swellings, heal lesions...