Drug Notes

New and old drugs in the news last week :

P: Dr. Matilda M. Brooks, a University of California physiologist, discovered in 1932 that the drug known as methylene blue counteracts the oxygen starvation caused by certain poisons (cyanide, carbon monoxide). Acting as a catalyst, the drug improves oxygen absorption by the red blood cells, thereby helping the body to make the most of a curtailed oxygen supply. Recently Dr. Brooks journeyed to Peru, where travelers in the high Andes are subject to soroche, a common fainting sickness caused by lack of oxygen (TIME, June 23). Dr. Brocks took some medical students up to an altitude of 15,000 feet and gave them methylene blue capsules. Result: no one became ill of soroche. The doctor, announcing her successful experiment last week, thought that methylene blue might also be a big help to high-altitude flyers. P:Announced: two promising new treatments for cancer of the prostate, which kills some 22,000 Americans annually. Yale's Dr. Clyde L. Deming reported that massive doses of the female hormone estrogen (instead of the small doses previously used) help four cases out of five and often prolong life. At the University of Chicago, three researchers found that a drug called ethyl carbamate is also effective; it relieves pain, reduces the size of the cancer. But unless cautiously given, the drug may be fatal.

P:A concoction of hydrogen peroxide and glycerin, developed by Dr. Ethan Allen Town of Boston Dispensary, seems to be effective against a number of skin diseases and certain tubercular infections. The mixture has shown best results against diabetic ulcers, tuberculous neck glands, Vincent's angina, tonsillitis, impetigo, boils.

P:A pain-killer called metopon hydrochloride is now available to doctors for relieving cancer patients (its use for any other purpose is forbidden). The National Research Council has found the drug a considerable improvement over morphine: it is twice as effective as a painkiller, is less likely to produce addiction, does not stupefy.

P: An ingenious new use of an old drug for an old disease was announced by Dr. I. Forest Huddleson of Michigan State College. Dr. Huddleson, one of the world's leading authorities on undulant fever (TIME, Nov. 18), had tried sulfadiazine against the disease. The drug killed undulant fever bacteria in a test-tube but did not work in most patients. The doctor decided that inactive antibodies in the patients' blood somehow neutralized the drug. To make the drug work, perhaps the patient needed a supply of active antibodies. Dr. Huddleson gave his patients transfusions of whole blood containing active antibodies, then administered sulfadiazine. It worked.

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