1950 - Medicine

Medicine

The United States has 33,000 new cases of infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) (see 1947). The disease remains mysterious to most people, families with afflicted members are often treated as pariahs, and although the 12-year-old March of Dimes continues to raise funds for research there is still no cure and no vaccine (see Salk, 1952).

The antibiotic Nystatin announced by U.S. Department of Agriculture fungus authority Elizabeth Lee Hazen, 65, and USDA chemist Rachel Brown, 52, is the first safe fungicide, effective for everything from curing athlete's foot, ringworm, life-threatening diseases, and dutch elm disease, to restoring moldy paintings and books. Scientists hail it as the first biomedical breakthrough since the 1928 discovery of penicillin. Hazen has found a soil sample on a friend's farm in Virginia, she showed it to Brown when they met 2 years ago, and within a year they had found and separated the antifungal substance, naming it for the New York State Department of Health. Hazen and Brown will receive a patent (#2,797,183) June 25, 1957, but will refuse any share in the royalties, living until their deaths on Civil Service salaries and pensions. Nystatin will be marketed through a non-profit research foundation, sales will generate profits of $13 million in the next 30 years, and the money will all go into grants, playing a key role in mycology research.

A poll of U.S. physicians reveals that penicillin is prescribed for roughly 60 percent of all patients.

Tranquilizer drugs (ataraxics) that eliminate anxiety and excitement without making users too drowsy are developed by Wallace Laboratories of Carter Products, Inc., and by Wyeth Laboratories. Chemists B. J. Ludwig and E. C. Piech at Wallace in New Brunswick, N.J., have synthesized meprobamate (methyl+propyl+carbamate) to produce the new tranquilizers (see Miltown, Equanil, 1954).

Blue Cross programs cover 37 million Americans, up from 6 million in 1940, but most Americans have no health insurance (see 1969; Britain, 1948; Medicare, 1965).

The U.S. ranks tenth among all countries in terms of life expectancy for men, but its ranking will drop sharply in the next decade and a half.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association of America is founded by Paul Cohen, 33.

Sales of Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound fall below $2 million for the first time in a decade (see 1883).

Physician Charles R. Drew of 1940 blood bank fame falls asleep at the wheel and dies in an auto accident at Burlington, N.C., April 1 at age 45. He has been driving to a meeting at Tuskegeee, Ala., with three colleagues, all of whom survive.