Killers of Poison

Two discoveries that may prove of prime medical importance were reported last week at the St. Louis meeting of the American Chemical Society (see p. 57). Both discoveries were made in the course of attempts to eliminate the dangerous reactions of drugs in the sulfanilamide family.

Magic Five. During the last three years in Manhattan, Pharmacologist Marvin Russell Thompson and Biochemist Gustav Julius Martin of the Warner Institute for Therapeutic Research have painstakingly poisoned 30,000 rats, mice and rabbits in their research work. When they gave the animals huge doses of sulfa drugs, or of common poisons, the scientists found that five basic substances present in normal blood promptly dwindled or disappeared. The vital chemicals: 1) ascorbic acid (vitamin C); 2) choline, a nitrogen compound, a constituent of nerve tissue; 3) cystine, a sulfur-containing compound found in hair and finger nails; 4) glycine, a protein derivative found in bile; 5) glucuronic acid, an organic acid found in urine.

Drs. Martin & Thompson, guessing that these substances were the body's natural antidotes to poison, made a mixture of all five, gave it to their animals along with doses of various harmful drugs. When they matched the "detoxicants" with poisons, grain for grain, the death rate of their animals was sliced to a fraction, in some cases disappeared. For example, arsenic, which killed 65% of the rats, killed only 15% when it was given with the detoxicants; a dose of sulfathiazole that would ordinarily have killed 40% of a large group of mice killed none. At the same time, the mixture seemed to strengthen the curative powers of sulfa drugs.

If the Warner experiments are borne out, the detoxicant mixture may be of great help in industrial poisonings, for it works effectively on lead, benzol (a solvent) and carbon tetrachloride (used in the cleaning industry). For human consumption, the detoxicants are made up in small white pills, which taste like strong, sour orange juice. Physicians are trying them on patients at several large medical schools, for alcoholism, toxemias of pregnancy, arthritis.

Dr. Martin's suggestion: that the pills be given "in wartime" to help neutralize the poisons produced by wounds and burns.

Yellow Marrow. Often large doses of sulfa drugs drain the body's reserves of white blood cells. (So does arsphenamine, the syphilis specific, and certain sedatives and painkillers.) A deficiency of white blood cells may also be caused by disease of the bone marrow, where most of them are produced. This form of blood disease, known as agranulocytosis or leukopenia, leaves the body at the mercy of any bacteria which may enter the bloodstream. For the white cells, which move about like amebae, are the body's shock troops; they gobble up invading bacteria, produce antidotes which neutralize their toxins.

Last week Dr. Harry Nicholls Holmes, head of the chemistry department at Oberlin College and president-elect of the Chemical Society, told how he had found a remedy for this fatal disease. With a group of colleagues, he had tried to find the exact chemicals in bone marrow which stimulate the production of white blood cells. After three years of tedious labor, in which they used over 200 Ib. of yellow-marrow from cattle bones, the scientists extracted about one ounce of alcohol. This they separated into two component parts: batyl alcohol and chimyl alcohol. When they examined the chemical structure, the scientists found that these alcohols were the same as those found in shark-liver oil over 15 years ago by two Japanese scientists.

"These substances," said Dr. Holmes last week, "can be made available in quantity for the use of the medical profession. Already a dozen top-flight workers in medical research are cooperating in tests with mice, rabbits, cats, dogs and people. Preliminary work with rabbits showed a definite influence on formation of white cells."

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