Word: chaulmoogra
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Sister Wilmer reached Kalaupapa at a propitious moment. The first medications more effective than the Asian ancients' chaulmoogra oil had been developed by U.S. researchers, tested at the Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, and just released for use in Hawaii. The best-known and most widely used is dapsone (DDS). For those who also had tuberculosis, isoniazid was used. Still newer drugs include the potent antibiotic rifampin, and even thalidomide, which is administered to treat complications, but not for women of childbearing age. Collectively, these are indeed wonder drugs: when used promptly to treat newly discovered cases, says...
...decided to take the job at Carville for one year because of his interest in dermatology. But he stayed year after year as staff doctor, then as executive officer and finally as director. At first. he could give the patients only humanity and the traditional palliative, chaulmoogra oil. ("We used to take the oil three ways," a patient recalls. "Externally, internally and eternally...
...Hope. The leaders in developing the new sulfa treatment were Dr. Faget and world-famed Leprologist George H. McCoy, head of Louisiana State University's preventive medicine department. (They long ago dropped the traditional chaulmoogra oil as worthless.) Because leprae bacilli are tough, and most of Carville's patients are in advanced stages of the disease, recovery is slow. But heavy daily injections of Promin (or doses of Diasone or Promizole pills) gradually clear out the bacilli, reduce swellings, heal lesions...
...leprosarium authorities, leper leader Maung Kyaw Thu laid down demands to be met "immediately": 1) improve the wretched diet; 2) reduce working hours of inmates (now six hours daily); 3) step up injection treatments of chaulmoogra oil to the prewar level...
...immediate reaction of oldtime lepers and their doctors to any new drug is disbelief. They have seen all sorts of medicines-gold solution, diphtheria toxoid, etc.-touted and then dropped. Even chaulmoogra oil, which seemed to do some good, although it was often painful or made patients sick, has fallen into disfavor (TIME, Feb. 26, 1940). Recently the regime of a tuberculosis sanitarium-rest, good food, good care-has become the only standard treatment. By this regime alone, some 10% to 20% of leprosy cases are eventually arrested. "Cured" is a word leprologists have never dared...