THE MARCH OF MEDICINE—WINTROBE 387 
Unlike the other great discoveries which we have described, the 
finding of a chemotherapeutic agent effective against streptococcus 
infections was made by the employee of an industrial firm interested 
in financial gain and in a Germany very different from that which 
nourished Virchow, Koch, and Ehrlich. The therapeutic agent which 
Domagk discovered was patented under the name of “prontosil” in 
1932 but no notice of this patent was published until 3 years later. 
A few German clinicians were given the compound for testing in 
patients but they were not informed as to its nature. Their clinical 
reports did not appear until 1935. “The I. G. Farbenindustrie had 
apparently withheld knowledge of the therapeutic value of prontosil 
so that its chemists could have time to prepare and test a large number 
of chemically related compounds.” (4) 
The keenness of French chemists ruined the German effort to 
control the important discovery. The French workers concluded that 
the effective agent in the mysterious “prontosil” must be p-aminoben- 
zene sulfonamide, or sulfanilamide for short. This proved to be the 
ease. Since sulfanilamide was a compound known to chemists even 
in 1908, it could not be patented. The complete information was then 
given to the scientific world. 
In England, Colebrook confirmed Domagk’s animal experiments 
and was able to produce convincing evidence that the new chemo- 
therapeutic agent was effective in man, something the Germans had 
failed to do. He showed that by the use of prontosil or with sulfa- — 
nilamide the mortality from puerperal sepsis or childbed fever, the 
great hazard of childbearing, could be reduced from between 16.6 
and 31.6 percent to 4.7 percent. 
The story that follows is one of discovery of new compounds, modi- 
fications of the original ones. Sulfapyridine, sulfathiazole, sulfa- 
diazine, and sulfamerazine now are names familiar to everyone. 
Administered to human beings ill with lobar pneumonia, sulfapyri- 
dine reduced the mortality of the disease from about 25 percent to 
5 percent. All the tediously produced and costly pneumonia antisera 
were superseded over night. In certain other infectious disorders 
equally dramatic effects were observed. The results following the 
use of the sulfonamides have been truly revolutionary. These agents 
have proved useful not only in treatment but also have been found 
valuable in preventing the spread of certain types of infections such, 
for example, as cerebrospinal meningitis, which might otherwise 
have developed into epidemics. 
Medical news last week vied with news of the days before invasion. Under the 
aspect of eternity, the medical news might even be more important than the 
military. WPB announced that the wonder drug penicillin, for three years 
practically a monopoly of the Army and Navy, was now being manufactured in 
Such quantity that it can be issued to civilians. (Time, May 15, 1941, p. 61.) 
