Another Experiment In Consumption Cure

Shannon News, 27 December 1929, Page 4

Another Experiment In Consumption Cure

GOLD TREATMENT. Gold is being injected into the veins of patients suffering from tuberculosis at England's largest hospital for consumptives, Brompton Hospital in Eulham road. The salt of gold is combined with sodium and is a Danish discovery called sanocrysin. Other gold compounds have been tried in Germany for a number of years, and have not been accepted as of definite curative value, but English physicians have turned to the new compound with fresh hopes since it was first heard of some five years ago. .

"It is too soon to give an opinion on the value of sanocrysin," an official of the Brompton Hospital told an Evening News correspondent, "but one has certainly had a number of encouraging results.

"Wo have boon using it for some little time—but only in conjunction with other forms of treatment. Tuberculosis is such a chronic disease that it is only after investigation over a number of years that an opinion as to the effects of a treatment can be estimated.

''Whether there is definite improvement in the. patients's state one cannot always say if the gold or another treatment is responsible. Moreover, if you were to treat two almost identical cases in the same way one might do well while the other might not. So much depends upon the resistance of each constitution of the disease.

"The tubercle bacillus is a very highly resistant organism, and is destroyed only by strong antiseptics. Therefore, it is very difficult to find something which will help to destroy the bacillus without damaging the patient.

"Were tuberculosis a disease of limited duration like pneumonia, we should be able to tell more definitely about this gold treatment, but, as you

know, the normal course of tuberculosis is measured not in days but in months.'' Sanocrysin, crystals come from Denmark in tiny sealed flasks. A sufficient quantity of a small dose would lie on a six-penny piece. They are white needle-like crystals with a faint gold sheen, and catch the light like gems. Before use they are dissolved in distilled water and then injected straight into a vein in the patient's forearm.