1935 - Medicine

Medicine

Sulfa drug chemotherapy begins a new era in medicine that will revolutionize treatment of infectious diseases and reduce the hazards of peritonitis in abdominal surgery. German biochemist Gerhard (Johannes Paul) Domagk, 40, and his colleagues at I. G. Farbenindustrie at Elberfeld have injected 1,000 white mice with fatal doses of streptococci and then treated them with Prontosil, an azo dye that has turned out to have antibacterial properties (all the white mice recovered, and the same results have been obtained with rabbits). Patented in 1931 by Farbenfabriken Bayer, Prontosil will be developed into sulfanilamide (see 1936), which will be followed by other sulfonamides (see Ehrlich, 1909). In addition to treating certain forms of pneumonia, sulfa drugs will make gonorrhea much easier to treat: physicians have relied on prophylaxis, mercurial ointments, and antiseptics to combat the disease, whose symptoms often go undetected in women; the disease is therefore not treated before it has spread throughout the reproductive tract. Even with sulfa drugs, gonorrhea continues to account for much of the high rate of pelvic operations.

English medical researcher Leonard Colebrook, 52, uses the newly-discovered antibacterial drug Prontosil to treat a woman who is dying of puerperal fever; she recovers, and within the next 10 years puerperal fever will cease to be a serious problem. The sulfonamide drug is then used successfully to treat a woman who is dying of septicemia (blood poisoning) (see Dubos, 1939; penicillin, 1928; 1940; streptomycin, 1943).

Title 6 of the Social Security Act signed into law August 14 authorizes Congress to appropriate millions of dollars for public health departments and biomedical research. President Roosevelt appointed Maryland-born rural health administrator Thomas Parran Jr., now 42, to the committee that drafted the legislation. Parran has worked to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Columbia Broadcasting System executives censored the phrase syphilis control from a talk he gave on radio, but newspapers across the country made him a celebrity by reprinting his censored speech. FDR will appoint Parran surgeon general next year.

The alkaloid ergonovine proves an effective tool in obstetrics (see ergotamine, 1918). It is extracted from the ergot fungus Claviceps purpurea, and selective breeding will raise the alkaloid content of the fungus from 0.02 percent to 0.5 percent; the product will be marketed under the name Ergothetrine in Britain.

Indiana-born Rockefeller Institute biochemist Wendell M. (Meredith) Stanley, 31, demonstrates the proteinaceous nature of viruses, showing that they are not submicroscopic organisms as has been commonly believed.

Alcoholics Anonymous has its beginnings June 10 at New York, where Vermont-born recovering alcoholic William Griffith "Bill" Wilson, 39, watches his surgeon friend Robert H. "Bob" Smith take his last drink and works with Smith to share with other alcoholics the experience of shaking the disease. A onetime Wall Street stockbroker, Wilson and his wife, Lois (née Burnham), have been living with her family in their Clinton Street, Brooklyn, house since he became unemployable because of his drinking. He underwent the standard barbiturate-and-beladonna purge to cure him of his habit 6 months ago; met Smith in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel at Akron, Ohio, in early May; and has helped Smith overcome his addiction. Akron housewife Henrietta Buckler, 47, opens her home to two alcoholics, and Wilson invites alcoholics to the Burnham house in Clinton Street; he begins meetings with the statement, "My name is Bill W., and I'm an alcoholic" ("Bill W." will retain his anonymity until his death in 1971) (see 1941).

The first operation for a mental disorder raises hopes that surgery can cure such disorders. Attending the International Neurological Congress at London, Portuguese surgeon Antonio Egas Moniz, now 61, employs a technique he calls "prefrontal leucotomy" (lobotomy) to bore through the skull of a patient and cut connections between the prefrontal lobe and the thalamus, seat of human emotions (see cerebral angiography, 1927). Others will follow Egas Moniz's procedure, suicidal patients will take a new interest in life, hypochondriacs will stop worrying about themselves, and persecution-complex victims will forget the supposed machinations of imaginary conspirators, but the procedure is not without risks and unwanted side effects.

Hungarian psychiatrist Ladislaus Joseph von Meduna at Budapest treats schizophrenia by injecting camphor to induce convulsions (see Sakel, 1933; electroconvulsive therapy, 1938).

British inventor A. Edwin Stevens produces the first wearable electronic hearing aid and founds a company that he calls Amplivox to produce the 2½-pound device (see Zenith, 1943).

The International Radio Medical Center is founded at Rome by Sicilian surgeon Guido Guida, 37. It provides free medical advice to ships and isolated Mediterranean islands; beginning in 1952 it will provide such advice to aircraft crews as well.

Diabetes insulin therapy pioneer John J. R. Macleod dies at Aberdeen, Scotland, March 16 at age 58; Nobel physiologist Charles Richet at his native Paris December 4 at age 85.