Success Story

At 73, Dr. Benjamin Minge Duggar made the greatest discovery of his career. For two years he and his associates at Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, N.Y. had been studying bits of soil from all parts of the U.S. Dr. Duggar, who retired in 1943 as professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin, was looking for a new antibiotic to place beside the two best known, penicillin and streptomycin.

After isolating 3,400 strains from 600 samples of soil, Dr. Duggar found one in 1945 that looked promising. Because it was a golden yellow color, it was called aureomycin. More than two years of careful testing in the laboratory followed. About a year ago, aureomycin was first used to treat human beings. Results were good. By last week aureomycin had taken its place as a standard medicine.

Doctors had found no sure weapons against rickettsiae, * the tiny organisms that are smaller than bacteria but larger than most viruses. Aureomycin has been successful against many rickettsial and virus-like diseases: Q-fever, rickettsial pox, parrot fever, typhus fever, lympho-granuloma venereum (a venereal disease).

Week after week, new reports of aureomycin's success have come in. Last month, in Washington, a research group headed by Dr. Harry F. Dowling of George Washington University reported that aureomycin was better than any other antibiotic for treating undulant fever (brucellosis), and that it produced good results against streptococcic and staphylococcic infections, scarlet fever, and a type of pneumonia that doctors sometimes call "primary atypical," sometimes "virus." The British medical journal Lancet has reported that aureomycin "has the widest range of activity of any known antibacterial substance."

This week Lederle doctors report claims of success in treating whooping cough and tularemia (rabbit fever). Dr. Duggar is still busy at the work he loves. He has some 200 new samples of soil, is looking for still another antibiotic.

* Named for their discoverer, U.S. Pathologist Howard Taylor Ricketts, who died in 1910.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.