Newest Wonder Drug

The beldams of yesteryear who gave onions and garlic to stave off typhus, let pennies grow green in the cellar for use on cuts, and put moldy bread on wounds had the right idea, though their practice was often fatal. For, some of their remedies contained antibiotics,* the natural bacteria-fighting substances produced by living organisms.

Antibiotics, of which penicillin (rhymes with "all God's chillun") is the most famed, are now the objects of the most exciting search in all bacteriology. In dozens of laboratories, experts are looking for antibiotics to fight the many diseases penicillin cannot cure: tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, dysentery, tularemia, salmonella food poisoning, many virus diseases. Already about 20 substances with such fancy names as clavacin, gliotoxin, patulin have been isolated from bacteria and molds, tested, discarded as either too weak or poisonous./-

Smell of Earth. Last week came news of a new antibiotic that may be as great as penicillin. Called streptomycin, it is a product of the mold-like Actinomyces griseus, which helps to give newly turned earth its distinctive smell. The drug was discovered by stocky, energetic Selman A. Waksman, 56, Russian-born microbiologist at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station in New Brunswick, and dean of U.S. antibiotic researchers. (The first to use the word antibiotic for these new drugs, he was writing on the subject years before penicillin's rise.)

In test tubes, streptomycin has destroyed the bacilli of tuberculosis and leprosy, the bacterium of tularemia. It has saved mice from dying of salmonella infections. Tested on human beings for toxicity, it has proved not dangerous.

"Penicillin Streptomycinate?" Helped by money from the Commonwealth Fund, the Federal Government and big drug firms, Dr. Waksman and his dozen students now spend most of their time on streptomycin. Many other laboratories are experimenting on animals with the new drug, working out production methods. In six months there may be enough for a thorough tryout on humans.

Half seriously, Dr. Waksman predicts that since penicillin is an acid and streptomycin is a base, they may eventually be combined into a salt, "penicillin streptomycinate." The salt might be so effective against so many diseases that doctors would no longer have to make diagnoses; they could give it for all infectious diseases, and many of the courses in medical schools could be abolished.

* From anitbiosis, meaning "an association between two or more organisms which is detrimental to one of them."

/- As yet untested are 60 antibiotics from lichens, the discovery of which was announced last week by four Yale researchers.

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