Drug Notes

New & old drugs were in the news last week:

P: Penicillin, so plentiful last summer that manufacturers got permission to put it in tablets and capsules, was back on the priority list as production fell farther & farther behind demand. The Civilian Production Administration (successor to WPB) figures that production is already 20% short of filling current needs, will set aside 40% for hospitals until further notice.

P: Tridione, a new synthetic drug, had a successful tryout against the petit mal (small attack) form of epilepsy. Tridione can also dull pain. Its strangest effect: to a patient under treatment with tridione, everything appears to be lightly coated with snow.

P: Paludrine, newly synthesized from coal tar, is claimed by its British discoverers to be a better malaria attack preventive than atabrine. Quinine and atabrine merely prevent parasites already in the blood from making the victim sick. Paludrine may occasionally even prevent malaria from getting into the blood at all, by killing the germ at the moment the mosquito pushes it through the skin.

P: The U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development hinted dramatically that it will soon announce something new for malaria.

P: A solution of the dye, malachite green, injected before a brain operation, will temporarily dye diseased brain tissue, but has no effect on healthy brain tissue. The British surgeon who uses it to help guide his knife has to reassure his patients beforehand: their skin and eyeballs will get over being green in a few days.

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