Hold That Penicillin

In the seven years since its prodigious healing powers dazzled the world, penicillin has often caused people to break out in a mild rash. Occasionally it has caused more severe reactions. Last week, in the U.S. Armed Forces Medical Journal, a Navy medical officer warned sharply that the ill effects of penicillin are increasing in both number and gravity. Reactions like old-fashioned serum sickness,/- he said, suggest that penicillin may act as such a strong sensitizing agent that a second course of treatment with it becomes impossible for a while.

Calling penicillin "an allergic hazard," Captain Robert L. Gilman reported that reactions in pre-sensitized patients are marked by "chills, fever, prostration, arthritic symptoms and shock." Recovery takes a long time, and there may be serious relapses. The ultimate absurdity, according to Oilman: using penicillin to treat vague complaints when the patient is actually suffering from a reaction to penicillin itself.

"A reappraisal of the therapeutic use of penicillin and a thorough rationalization of every dose--and amount--should be undertaken," said Captain Oilman. "We must abandon the thought current in some quarters that this antibiotic is a cure-all or that its prophylactic use is justified. Not only is the routine use before all operations, dental as well as surgical, unsound, but the facility with which it is administered for almost every complaint . . . needs to be halted."

/- Which commonly resulted from horse and rabbit serum treatments for pneumonia.

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