Medicine: Drug Notes, Mar. 5, 1945

¶ Just get the champion in the ring with his opponent, and the champ will do the rest. “The task is to get penicillin to the microbes,” said Discoverer Sir Alexander Fleming. “You can do it with a simple spray, snuff or lozenges.” He predicted penicillin in lipsticks and tooth paste. A Lancet report describes a penicillin spray as “effective” in stubborn staphylococcus skin infections—e.g., multiple boils, pustular acne, impetigo, hair-follicle inflammation.

¶ The best drug yet found for African sleeping sickness, according to U.S. Public Health Service doctors, is gamma (paraarsenosophenyl) -butyric acid. In tests conducted for U.S. troops in Africa, the new drug apparently cleared up early cases entirely, helped somewhat in late cases.

¶ Neostibosan, an antimony compound, seems to have cured eleven out of 33 Puerto Rican filariasis patients. Drs. Harry Rose and James T. Culbertson of Columbia University, who have given the treatments since last April, believe that the drug may eventually cure some of their other patients. (The disease sometimes results in the monstrous swellings of elephantiasis.) This is good news for U.S. troops in the Southwest Pacific area.