Word: waksman
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...which there was no known cure. It does the job in many a case where penicillin and the sulfa drugs fail. But it is expensive: about $16 a gram (average treatment: six to ten grams). Since the drug's discovery in 1944 by Rutgers' Microbiologist Selman A. Waksman, it has been tested against a wide variety of diseases by a National Research Council committee headed by Boston's Dr. Chester S. Keefer. Their report, in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association added up the results in 1,000 cases. Highlight of their report...
...Streptomycin has cleared up many an intestinal and urinary tract infection. The drug's discoverer, Dr. Selman A. Waksman, reports that when used before an abdominal operation it tends to prevent post-operative infections...
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...