Admirable M&B

The most important patient in the world was getting well last week, somewhere in the Middle East. A sulfa drug (probably sulfapyridine) had again saved Prime Minister Winston Churchill from pneumonia (first time: last February). Before leaving for a good rest at an "unknown destination" (Axis radio reported him in Aswan), Mr. Churchill issued what the New York Times called "one of the most poignant and personal communiques ever issued from No. 10 Downing Street." It was the best advertising sulfa drugs ever had:

"On the 11th of December I felt so tired out that I had to ask General Eisenhower for a few days' rest before proceeding. This was accorded me in the most generous manner.

"The next day came the fever, and the day after, when the photographs showed that there was a shadow on one of my lungs, I found that everything had been foreseen. . . . Excellent nurses and the highest medical authorities in the Mediterranean arrived from all quarters as if by magic. This admirable M & B [sulfapyridine was originally called May & Baker 693, after the firm which made it], from which I did not suffer any inconvenience, was used at the earliest moment and after a week's fever the intruders were repulsed. I hope all our battles will be equally well conducted.

"I did not feel so ill in this attack as I did last February. The M & B ... did the work most effectively. There is no doubt that pneumonia is a very different illness from what it was before this marvellous drug was discovered."

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One of the nurses who "arrived as if by magic" was pretty, dark-haired Sister Betty Clarke, 29. She, too, wrote home--an ecstatic letter to her mother: "Exciting news for you. I am nursing the Prime Minister. Isn't it an honor? With another sister I set out at 4 a.m. to an unknown destination. Quite the sort of thing that happens in a storybook. . . . We share the nursing duties. There is not very much to do for him. It has been a wonderful experience. So many distinguished people. We want for nothing. The countryside is lovely--hedges of cacti and wild flowers."

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