NEW DRUG FOUND

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 196, 4 September 1937, Page 14

NEW DRUG FOUND

High Value for BlooH-Stream Diseases LONDON EXPERIMENTS LONDON, Aug. 7. Tbe new drug para-aminobenzenesul-phonamide has been described as ' ' epoch-making ' ' and '' one of the greatest discoveries of the century in chemotherapy." It was given a great deal of publieity as a result of the British Pharmaccntical Conference last week. Actually it has been in use for some months. Through its ageney the mortality rate i'or puerperai fever in tho Queen Charlotte Hospital, London, tho I centre of investigations, has fallen from I 22 per cent. to 8 per cent., while, as a delegate l'rom Cluna reported, it has been employed widely in that country and with most beneficiai results. It was leffc, however, to a young research chemist, Dr. W. J. Dyke, of Evans' Biological Institute, Runcorn, to bring the discovery to general attention through his paper on the toxic effect of the drug on mice. Doctors and phamacists at the conference, it is reported, all eonciyred in the view that the discovery is most important and far-reaching in its implications. It has been established already that it is an effecture cure for diseases of the blood stream — puerperai sepsis, eiysipelas, tonsilitis, und other inteetions — but its potentiali-' ties have not yot been fuily explored, aud it is not liuprobable tnat its use may be extended to a much wider varicty of diseases. Mr. T. 15. Leschcr, who was chairman of the conference, in diseussing the evolution of tlie drug aud the potcntialities iudieated by the results, described it as oue of the three greatest discovcrics in medicine in the last 50

years — the other two being insulin and liver extract. Para-aminobenzenesulphonamide, in its present state, he said, is a development of a chemical theory regarding dyestuffs and their uses as germicides exponded by a German scientist in 1935. That theory was followed up by a group of British investigiators, with the result that the drug was found to be fully effective and much more prompt in its action than in the earlier stage of its evolution.