Magic Brew

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 56, 9 March 1944, Page 8

Magic Brew

ALL NIGHT VIGIL An all-night vigil by Australian research scientists over a brew in a couple of buckets and a petrol drum led to the production locally of the magic drug sulphaguanidine. A wartime discovery, this drug has eliminated dysentery among our troops in New Guinea. Professor V. M. Trikojus and research scientists in the bio-chemical laboratories of Sydney and Melbourne universities carried out the experiments that produced the drug. When they were set the problem of making it in a hurry, they sought its two ingredients, which, in crude form, could be called coal-tar and fertiliser. Aniline, the coal-tar derivative, they' had in the form of sulplianTlamide itself, which was already' being made on a commercial scale in Australia. A cupply of the fertiliser they wanted, calcium cyanamidc, an American nitrogenous plant-food which in more concentrated form is used for gassing rats and rabbits, was located in Alcibourne and Brisbane. Tho apparatus was simple—petrol drums and odds and ends, including two stainless steel buckets. The method of production, however, was by no means so simple. The director, his laboratory assistant (Air. G. K. Hughes), and two technical assistants, were on the job for 16 hours a day, watching the temperature of sulphanilamide and adding dicyandiamide. The dicy'andiamide they refined from a powder intended to grow prize dahlias, imported into Australia in the days when dahlias mattered more than they do now. From this strange laboratory brew they produced 1001 b. of sulphaguaas- - enough for 1000 doses.