Word: chloromycetin
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There is no doubt that chloramphenicol, better known by Parke, Davis & Co.'s trade name of Chloromycetin, is a potent and valuable antibiotic. That has been clear since 1947, when it was found to kill a wider variety of bacteria than penicillin or other early antibiotics. Better yet, it was one of the first drugs to show activity against some odd ball microbes called rickettsiae. But Chloromycetin soon showed another side of its character: a few patients developed a severe anemia after taking it, and by 1952 it was clear that some of these patients had died...
Last week the Chloromycetin controversy boiled up again in hearings before the Senate Monopoly Subcommittee. Expert medical witnesses agreed that serious and fatal reactions to Chloromycetin are relatively rare. The University of Illinois' Dr. William R. Best suggested that only one patient out of 20,000 or even 100,000 might develop them. Dr. William Dameshek of Manhattan's Mount Sinai School of Medicine put the rate at about one in 10,000. Either way, it sounds few enough. But so many Americans took Chloromycetin that by 1964 the American Medical Association counted 298 U.S. cases of serious...
Typhoid & Typhus. Chloromycetin also saves lives, and in some cases when no other drug is likely to do so. How many? Most medical opinion holds that Chloromycetin is just about the best drug against psittacosis ("parrot fever"), of which there has been a recent median of 60 U.S. cases a year; against typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, a total of 484 cases; murine typhus, 33 cases; Rocky Mountain spotted fever, 263 cases; one form of meningitis caused by Hemophilus bacilli, exact number of cases not known, but probably less than...
...still to come. Melioidosis has the unpleasant ability to lie dormant in a victim for as long as six years. When it flares up, death occasionally follows within a few days or weeks. The "Vietnamese time bomb," as it has been grimly nicknamed, can be effectively treated by Chloromycetin. The drug, which is used against typhoid, must be given in large doses for at least a month. The prolonged period is essential but not without risk of side effects (including possibly fatal anemia). Since little or no effect is noted at the beginning of treatment, the doctor must be confident...
...Chloramphenicol (Chloromycetin), though one of the most dangerous drugs in wide use, is by far the best for typhoid fever. In the Philippines, among 408 charity patients suffering from typhoid, chloramphenicol was deliberately withheld from 157, of whom 36 died. Only 20 died among the 251 who got the standard treatment. By statistical deduction, 23 patients died needlessly for the sake of the study...