240 Miracles Ahead! 



clear up toxic conditions resulting from the use of the other 

 sulfa drugs. Sulfadiazine also is proving highly successful in 

 both military and civilian life as a treatment for burns. It can 

 be sprayed directly on the burns, and acts swiftly to relieve 

 the pain. The drug leaves a soft, flexible scar; speeds the 

 growth of new skin; and has none of the harmful properties 

 of tannic acid, a widely used treatment for burns. 



Sulfaguanidine was developed specifically to fight diseases 

 of the intestinal tract, which the other four drugs don't attack 

 effectively. It is particularly useful in the treatment of bacil- 

 lary dysentery, a disease that has ravaged armies throughout 

 history. The drug clears up most cases within three to five 

 days, and the soldier does not need to be hospitalized. 



Since the different germs pneumococcus, streptococcus, 

 staphylococcus, gonococcus, and others may produce a wide 

 variety of diseases, chemists are constantly seeking other sulfa 

 derivatives to combat them. 1 Sulfasuxidine, or succinyl-sulfa- 

 thiazole, has proved useful in clearing up infections of the gas- 

 trointestinal tract. But in May, 1943, there appeared a new 

 sulfa drug phthalyl-sulfathiazole which is expected to be a 

 more powerful weapon against intestinal infections, such as 

 dysentery, than any of its relatives. It has two to four times 

 the germ-checking power of sulfasuxidine. Doses by mouth 

 at four-hour intervals have produced no toxic symptoms in 

 dog or man. 



Thousands of people are alive today because sulfa drugs 

 defended them against disease germs that would have proved 

 fatal a few years ago. In five years these wonder drugs have 

 cut the death rate in pneumonia almost two-thirds and in 

 appendicitis 35 per cent. Gas gangrene, which is caused by a 



1 More than one thousand other sulfa derivatives are being studied today 

 by chemists. The latest sulfa derivative sulfamerazine has proved to be 

 even less toxic than sulfadiazine, which had been considered in most cases 

 the most powerful and the least toxic of these drugs. 



