Word: waksman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Smell of Earth. Last week came news of a new antibiotic that may be as great as penicillin. Called streptomycin, it is a product of the mold-like Actinomyces griseus, which helps to give newly turned earth its distinctive smell. The drug was discovered by stocky, energetic Selman A. Waksman, 56, Russian-born microbiologist at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station in New Brunswick, and dean of U.S. antibiotic researchers. (The first to use the word antibiotic for these new drugs, he was writing on the subject years before penicillin's rise...
...Penicillin Streptomycinate?" Helped by money from the Commonwealth Fund, the Federal Government and big drug firms, Dr. Waksman and his dozen students now spend most of their time on streptomycin. Many other laboratories are experimenting on animals with the new drug, working out production methods. In six months there may be enough for a thorough tryout on humans...
Half seriously, Dr. Waksman predicts that since penicillin is an acid and streptomycin is a base, they may eventually be combined into a salt, "penicillin streptomycinate." The salt might be so effective against so many diseases that doctors would no longer have to make diagnoses; they could give it for all infectious diseases, and many of the courses in medical schools could be abolished...
News from Rahway. When the new drug was quietly announced two years ago by Drs. Selman Abraham Waksman and Harold Boyd Woodruff of the New Jersey State Agricultural Experiment Station at Rutgers, only its test-tube performance was known. The present excitement comes from mouse experiments last summer by research workers at the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research, at Rahway, N.J. (the drug has not yet been tried on people). The evidence...
...Waksman and Woodruff announced their discovery in Washington, at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. Other highlights...