Penicillin Week

The wonder drug penicillin is scheduled to go on sale in U.S. drugstores this week though actual marketing may be a little late, since the Pure Food and Drug Administration must okay individual products.* Only a few cities and states (e.g. New York City, Pennsylvania, Florida) prohibit the sale of penicillin without a prescription.

Physicians wondered what would happen. Did people generally know what the wonder drug is good for? Only years of hard work in laboratories and clinics will finally determine what sulfa and penicillin will and will not do. But doctors are now reasonably certain that:

P: Penicillin, given by injection or by mouth, is effective against pneumococcus pneumonia, streptococcus infections (e.g., childbed fever), pneumococcus and meningococcus meningitis. Penicillin is usually preferred to sulfa drugs in these diseases, since it is more powerful, and less likely than sulfa to cause complications.

P: Penicillin is effective in staphylococcus infections (e.g., carbuncles, blood-poisoning), gonorrhea, syphilis, yaws, anthrax, some forms of gas gangrene, certain heart infections. But doctors warn that penicillin may cause a temporary rise in venereal disease since: 1) treatment looks so easy that prevention is relaxed; 2) quick penicillin treatment for gonorrhea may mask early symptoms of syphilis, so that a man may discover he has syphilis only after irreparable damage has been done. (Treatment for syphilis requires at least 20 times as much penicillin as for gonorrhea.)

P: Neither sulfa drugs nor penicillin will cure or prevent tuberculosis, leprosy, typhus, tularemia, undulant fever, virus diseases (e.g., infantile paralysis), mumps (probably a virus disease), whooping cough, colds and influenza, pregnancy.

*Grateful for their new bonanza, drug companies last week gave Penicillin Discoverer Sir Alexander Fleming a -L-20,000 research fund to be used by his St. Mary's Hospital laboratory as he sees fit.

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