Abstract
THE cnemists, Fritz Mietzsch and Joseph Klarer, and the pharmacologist, Gerhard Domagk, all working in we laboratories of the I.G. Farbenindustrie in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, synthetized and tested the first chemical compound to show specific chemotherapeutic protection in mice infected with lethal doses of hæmolytic streptococci. This historic occasion was probably early in 1931, since the German patent covering it is dated November 7, 1931. About a year later, on December 24, 1932, a patent was applied for to cover prontosil rubrum, a more effective compound, and this very great discovery must have taken place earlier in the same year. The first clinical report appears to be that of Dr. Foerster at the monthly meeting of the Dusseldorf Dermatological Society on May 17, 1933, and records the cure of a staphylococcal septicæmia in a ten-month-old boy by the use of prontosil ('Strep-tozon'). Late in 1935, Tréfouë l, Tréfouël, Nitti and Bovet, at the Pasteur Institute, discovered that the chemotherapeutic action of prontosil, and of many similar molecules, was due to p-amino-benzene-sulphonamide, a metabolic product of prontosil. They went on to say, "The therapeutic activity of such a simple molecule which is itself not a colouring matter, opens the way to a systematic study of chemotherapy comparable to that which has been followed in the case of pentavalent arsenic". Time has clothed this scientific appraisal in the garb of classical understatement.
The Sulphonamides and Allied Compounds
By Dr. Elmore H. Northey. (American Chemical Society, Monograph Series, No. 106.) Pp. xxvii + 660. (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1948.) 75s. net.
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BROWNLEE, G. The Sulphonamides and Allied Compounds. Nature 163, 662 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163662a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163662a0