Penicillin Echoes

Before the last echoes of penicillin's wonder-working died away, a fresh piece of news set the echoes going again. Last week, through hospital corridors all over the U.S., the news was: penicillin may be effective against late syphilis. Doctors already knew that penicillin was effective against early syphilis (TIME, Oct. 25). But late syphilis is much more difficult to cope with.

Since last September, the Office of Scientific Research and Development has sponsored the use of penicillin on more than 1,000 syphilitics at all stages of the disease. Doses ranged up to 4,000,000 units per patient. On the basis of these cases, Dr. Joseph Earle Moore told the Association of American Physicians (see p. 44): "Penicillin has a profound immediate effect on syphilis of all types, early or late." He cautioned them that it may be years before anyone can say whether the drug actually cures late stages of the disease.

Other penicillin news that echoed in the press last week:

P:Typhus in mice can be controlled by penicillin, according to a report from St. Louis University. If verified, this is the first time a virus (the typhus organism is thought to be a virus) has yielded to the drug.

P:The first picture of Dr. Hans Enoch of London, co-discoverer of viviicillin, a cheap, "simplified" form of penicillin, arrived in the U.S. (see cut, /p. 44). Dr. Enoch and his colleague, W. Kurt S. Wal-lersteiner, use suspensions of the pure living penicillin mold for injections. Only a small percentage of the material is active drug, but it has achieved some remarkable cures: e.g., a hemophiliac boy with a ruptured appendix. He recovered without an operation.

P:Samples of a captured Nazi drug, which is supposed to rival penicillin, were analyzed by British Army doctors, turned out to be marfanil, a sulfa drug. According to the New York Times, marfanil's "curative properties are second only to penicillin" and it is "no more toxic than sulfanilamide." The British Army has already tried it.

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