TOXINS AND ANTITOXINS 287 



Avery, Goebel, Heidelberger and others upon the chemical na- 

 ture of the type specific polysaccharides, it has been established 

 that they are definitely correlated also with virulence. Appar- 

 ently when the polysaccharide of Type III pneumococcus is de- 

 stroyed by the enzyme tlie organisms are deprived of their most 

 important weapon of offense and can he destroyed rapidly l)y tlie 

 body. In the case of serum therapy in pneumococcus pneumonia 

 part of the antibodies injected unite with circulating polysac- 

 charide and thus the amount of the former that is available for 

 opsonification is reduced. In a subsequent paper Dubos (1940) 

 discusses in more detail the enzyme mentioned above and also re- 

 ports the discovery of a bactericidal, or at least a bacteriostatic, 

 agent (Gramicidin) in extracts of a sporulating soil bacillus. It 

 acts upon gram-positive but not upon gram-negative bacteria and 

 is quite toxic for the animal body. 



Chemotherapy in Pneumococcal and Other Bacterial Infec- 

 tions. — It is generally agreed that 1932 marks the beginning of a 

 renaissance in chemotherapy. In that year, Domagk, director of 

 the pathological laboratory in Elberfeld, Germany, discovered that 

 prontosil has marked therapeutic value in streptococcal septicemia 

 in mice. In 1933, Foerster treated successfully a case of staphylo- 

 coccal septicemia in a ten-month-old infant with prontosil. 

 Domagk (1935) introduced a second therapeutic azo dye which he 

 called prontosil soluble and reported additional success in the 

 treatment of both experimental and clinical streptococcus infec- 

 tions. It remained, however, for Colebrook and Kenny, and But- 

 tle, Gray and Stephenson in England, Love, Bliss and Marshall, 

 and Mellon, Gross and Cooper in America to arouse interest among 

 clinicians and to discover that the sulfanilamide portion of pronto- 

 sil is the active chemotherapeutic agent. It is interesting to note 

 that sulfanilamide was first prepared by Gelmo in 1908 in the 

 course of his investigations of azo dyes. In 1938 Whitby reported 

 that a new sulfonamide drug, sulfapyridine, synthesized in Eng- 

 land by Ewins and Phillips, was of therapeutic value in pneumo- 

 coccal and staphylococcal infections in mice. In 1939 suLfa- 

 thiazole and its methyl derivatives were prepared by Fosbinder 

 and Walter, and Lott and Bergeim independently. According to 

 Goodman and Gilman (1941) over 1200 organic compounds con- 

 taining sulfur have been synthesized and studied. New com- 



