Staphylococcus Conquered?

A friend of Dr. Ralph Robertson Mellon in Pittsburgh lay dying from blood poisoning caused by streptococcus. In despair, Dr. Mellon gave him a dose of prontosil (sulfanilamide), a German drug never before tried on human beings in the U. S. To his joy, the dying man made a rapid recovery. That was three years ago.

Last fortnight, before the Southern Medical Association meeting in Memphis, Dr. Grayson Lewis Carroll of St. Louis

University told a similar tale, one which may possibly prove as significant to medical history as Dr. Mellon's. As violent as the streptococcus is the pus-forming Staphylococcus germ, which causes boils, invades hearts, lungs, joints, kidneys, often fatally. To combat the Staphylococcus sulfanilamide and its offspring sulfapyridine were tried, but with few encouraging results.

Chemists Russell J. Fosbinder and Lewis Aldro Walter of Maltbie Chemical Co. at Newark, N. J. last year created a new sulfanilamide product: sulfamethylthiazol. Biologists of Winthrop Chemical Co.'s Albany Laboratories fed the drug to mice infected with Staphylococcus germs, found it far more powerful, far less toxic than sulfapyridine. But even after hundreds of trials, no one dared experiment on human beings.

Last September, a friend of Dr. Carroll's lay in a St. Louis hospital dying from an infected, pus-dripping kidney. As a last desperate measure, Dr. Carroll wired for a supply of sulfamethylthiazol. He gave his friend a small amount of the bland white crystals, both in capsules and injections. When the patient showed signs of improvement, Dr. Carroll continued feeding him from six to 14 grams of the drug every four hours for 16 days. In a few weeks the patient, said cautious Dr. Carroll, had "apparently recovered."

Since that time Dr. Carroll has used the drug with remarkable success on four other staphylococcic patients, including a baby. "No toxic symptoms or signs ascribable to this drug were seen," reported Dr. Carroll, "except for a slight nausea." About the future of the drug, which is not yet on the market, he hazarded no comment. Last week sulfamethylthiazol was tried on two Staphylococcus victims in a Midwest hospital, and on one in Manhattan, with hopeful results. But still restrained is the cautious enthusiasm of physicians, who cannot commit themselves on the drug until it has been tried on many more patients.

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