In August 1936, Dr. Ralph Robertson Mellon of Pittsburgh* stood at the bedside of a patient stricken with deadly peritonitis. In desperation he fed her a German-made drug, never before used in the U. S. The patient rapidly recovered. Dr. Mellon then plunged into an intensive study of the action of this drug, a combination of benzene, a sulfur compound and naphthalene, called prontosil. He learned that: 1) one of its three ingredients, naphthalene, was medically worthless; 2) sulfanilamide, a cheaper U. S. product, composed of the other two ingredients, would do everything prontosil could do. Last fortnight, together with Dr. Paul Gross and Frank B. Cooper, Pittsburgh Institute of Pathology chemist. Dr. Mellon published the first complete appraisal of sulfanilamide, the most remarkable drug of this generation.†
Its prime points:
¶ In less than two years sulfanilamide has cured thousands of streptococcic infections of various types, including streptococcic septicemia (blood poisoning), streptococcic sore throat, peritonitis, puerperal sepsis (childbed fever), etc. Meningitis, gonorrhea and certain types of pneumonia have also been conquered. So far sulfanilamide has had no remarkable effect on diseases produced by bacteria other than the streptococcus, men-ingococcus, pneumococcus, or gonococcus. ¶ Although there have been only ten fatalities in 4,000 cases,** with "no correlation between these reactions and the dosage," sulfanilamide often produces such unpleasant by-effects as nausea and vomiting, dizziness, rash and fever. These disappear with the disease.
* No kin to the aluminum Mellons.
*SULFANILAMIDE THERAPY OF BACTERIAL INFECTIONS— Ralph R. Mellon, Paul Gross and Frank B. Cooper—Charles C. Thomas ($4).
**The 76 deaths which occurred in the U. S. last year from "elixir of sulfanilamide" were not due to the action of the drug, but to the diethylene glycol which an ignorant chemist used to dissolve it. Sulfanilamide should be taken only upon a physician's prescription.