Medicine Looks Ahead 241 



bacillus and not by poison gases, no longer is a great menace 

 to the wounded soldier because of sulfa powder. 



Meningitis, inflammation of the membranes that envelop 

 the brain and spinal cord, was one of the plagues of the first 

 World War. It may be caused by the meningococcus, the 

 tubercle bacillus, the pneumococcus, the streptococcus, or the 

 haemophilus influenzae. Meningitis due to the meningococcus 

 can be treated with serum and sulfanilamide. Deaths probably 

 could be cut to five per one hundred cases by a prompt use of 

 sulfanilamide and sulfapyridine. Meningitis due to strepto- 

 coccus and haemophilus influenzae is harder to combat. Sul- 

 fanilamide has pulled 65 per cent of the patients through the 

 first, and sulfadiazine and serum have changed the 100 per 

 cent mortality of the second to a 70 per cent recovery. 



Gonorrhea, which afflicts an estimated twelve million or 

 more persons in the United States, is probably the most fre- 

 quent cause of sterility in both sexes and often leads to other 

 serious ailments. In terms of relative prevalence, gonorrhea is 

 four to eight times as common in the armed forces as syphilis 

 now being treated speedily by the new arsenic drug ma- 

 pharsen. Remarkable results have been achieved with sulf athia- 

 zole and other sulfa drugs in the treatment of gonorrhea. And 

 now the Army and Navy are conducting tests which indicate 

 that sulfathiazole prophylaxis will prevent gonorrhea. The 

 giving of sulfathiazole to men before and after exposure re- 

 duced the incidence of the disease in a test group to a yearly 

 level of 8 per thousand as compared with 171 per thousand in 

 the control group. 



Commenting on the test, the Journal of the American 

 Medical Association said: 



"It is our opinion that, under certain conditions and in a final 

 form yet to be developed, prophylactic sulfathiazole adminis- 

 tration would produce a remarkable gonorrhea decline in the 

 Army. Certain dangers are involved in administering the drug, 



