Hexylresorcinol

For ten years, Dr. Veader Leonard and a group of confreres in the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, have worked with poisons-salts, acids, fats, with blue canisters of strange mineral, with bottles of green, fatal syrup. They sought that latter-day elixir, a fluid deadly to germs, harmless to man, a perfect antiseptic. Last week, came the announce- ment that they had found and tested such a germicide-hexylresorcinol, 50 times as powerful as carbolic acid.

Dr. Leonard began his experiments with carbolic acid, which, as is well known, kills disease germs and man with equal despatch. To resorcinol (very similar to carbolic acid) certain "fatty" acids were linked. The result was, at first, both an excellent antiseptic and a deadly poison. As the molecular proportion was changed, the antiseptic properties increased, the poisonous effect diminished. At last, with great difficulty, six atomical groups of the acids were united with the resorcinol, hexylresorcinol formed.

Warily, Dr. Leonard administered some of this fluid to a rabbit. The small creature lived. He took. some himself, survived. His attendants each swallowed their doses, were not harmed. Then the antiseptic was administered in some cases of kidney disease in the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Within 48 hours, these cases were cured totally and, to all appearances, permanently. A committee of 15 learned gentlemen from the National Research Council was appointed to conduct further investigation.