The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Edmund Lowe in The Weapon That Saves Lives, a story of the sulfur drugs. Music Later in tonight's program, Cavalcade will be privileged to present a special guest, Brigadier General George F. Lowe, Deputy Surgeon General of the Army of the United States, with information of vital concern to everyone who knows a man or a woman in the armed forces. And now DuPont presents Edmund Lowe as narrator in The Weapon That Saves Lives, the story of the discovery of sulfur drugs, written by Arthur Arendt, especially for the Cavalcade of America. Music My name is Oriolus Theophrastus von Hohenheim. I was born in 1493 and will die in 1541. Francois Rabelais is my contemporary and Martin Luther. You will come to know me in future generations as Paracelsus the Great Physician. I am dedicating these brief 48 years of my stay on this planet to one great cause, the freeing of medicine from the fetters of 1400 years of corruption and superstition. It shall be my task to convert to man's good usage the things of the earth, so that I may cure him in his bed of pain, seeking out his ills and destroying them, but better to prolong his corporeal existence in health before Almighty God. Music Listener, have you ever stopped to consider the miracle of coincidence? You, madam, how did you happen to meet your husband? Were you there that day when he turned up? You could very well have been someplace else. And you, sir, how did you happen to get started on your career? What accident set you along the path you've been following all these years? Yes, the history of life and death is full of coincidences. Life and death. Life and death. Coincidences. Music And now to business. There is, as you know, a mineral dug out of the earth that men call coal, COAL. Listener, visualize a lump of coal. Regard its unpretentious exterior, and then consider with me the strange chain of coincidence that from this black diamond dug out of the earth's bowels produces one of the most potent destroyers of disease in all medical science, sulfonylamide. Music Sulfonylamide. It all began in the year 1856 when two men talked things over at the Royal College of Chemistry in London, England. Perkin. Perkin. William Henry Perkin. Oh, yes, Professor Hoffman. Going home for your Easter holiday, William? Yes, Professor. To work. I have a laboratory at home, you know. What are you going to work on? Oh, I don't know. Anything that strikes my fancy. Just so long as it's chemistry. William, why not put your holiday to real use by going after something specific? Such as? Such as quinine. Quinine? But that comes from bark. Peruvian bark, as I remember. You were thinking of creating it synthetically? Exactly. Remember Parasauksus, my boy? He made laudanum, sulfur, arsenic, and mercury all a part of the medical pharmacopeia. He cured through chemistry. Let us try to do likewise. Quinine, eh? And what did you have in mind to produce it from? Coal tar. Coal tar. That stinking, nauseating mess. Exactly, William. That stinking, nauseating mess. And William Henry Perkin went home on that Easter holiday in 1856, home to the makeshift laboratory he's been puttering around in ever since he could remember. William, that stuff smells. Yeah, I know it, sister. What is it? It's coal tar. And what's that one? It's a derivative. What's a derivative? It's one of the chemicals that make up the coal tar. Now keep quiet and watch. If this turns white, maybe I've got something. Why does it... Quiet now, quiet. It's black. It's turning black. So it is. Let's see. I've tried toluadine, potassium dichromate. I've tried sulfate. Oh, Alice, didn't I tell you never to touch that test tube? Now look what you've done. Well, look at my dress. Look at it. It's purple. It serves you right next time you know. Did you say purple? Here, let me take a look at that. My stockings, they're purple too. And my shoes. William, my shoes. Very strange. Very strange. Now I wonder why it turned purple. Within a week, William Henry Perkin found out why it turned purple. The coal tar derivative he'd used on that last experiment was aniline. And this 18-year-old boy thus became the discoverer of the first of the famous aniline dyes. Their beauty and inexpensiveness revolutionized an industry. But the aim of a great paracelsus to cure human ills through chemistry went down, scuttled, a lost cause in the mad stampede that followed Perkin's discovery. It would take a hundred years to break down all the secrets in coal tar. The possibilities and combinations are limitless. I advise you young men to study it. Get to know it. Experiment. Experiment. Experiment. Professor, I've just found something. Taste it. It's sweet. Saccharin from coal tar. Maria, come here. It doesn't look like anything, but it smells beautiful. Perfume from coal tar. And here we pause for a moment over one of the strangest, most ironic episodes in the long saga of chemical experimentation. The scene is the university in Vienna, the year 1908. Professor, my name is Gelmo. I know you here, Gelmo. State your business, please. I know how busy you are. It's about my thesis. Ah, you want to know if you passed, if you will be getting your doctor's degree next week. Well, yes, but... You have passed. Thank you, sir, but if it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to discuss with you. Discuss? Discuss? I have no time for discussion. Professor, did you read it? I read it. Paraaminoponzene sulfonamide. Very interesting. Is that all? Another coal tar derivative, another dye, one more added to the many. It is no miracle you have a true Gelmo. No, Herr Professor. I advise you to forget it. Go on to other things. Yes, Herr Professor. I assure you, the world will never be shaken to its foundations by a compound named paraaminopenzene sulfonamide. Nobody can even pronounce it. Paraaminopenzene sulfonamide. Poor Gelmo. Probably no student in all medical history ever contributed so much in exchange for a doctorate. And this compound, this aminobenzene sulfonamide, went into the limbo of forgotten things, swallowed up in obscurity along with its discoverer. P. Gelmo. Nobody knows what became of him. They don't even know what his first name was. Only the initial P remains, an ironic monument to the memory of the little Viennese medical student who first produced the miracle drug, sulfonamide. But science moves forward. In 1910, another man appeared. This one was driven by a fierce urge to root out and destroy the deadly Spirochaete, the cause of one of man's most fearsome diseases. My name is Paul Erlich. I have been conducting a series of experiments with chemical agents against spirilla in the human body. Salvasan 606, the magic bullet. This salvasan has proved successful in the destruction of the spirilla forms in syphilis. It marks a great step forward in the new science of chemotherapy. Paul Erlich died at the beginning of the First World War, but his salvasan, his magic bullet, survived a cheap death to make sick men whole again through chemotherapy. In the year 1932, there lived in Germany a certain Dr. Gerhard Domack, director of the Institute of Experimental Pathology at Elberfeld. It was his notion to take up the sword laid down by Erlich. Among the compounds he tested was a coal tar derivative called prontosol. One day, as he bent over the contents of a test tube in his laboratory... I know I am on the right track. I know it. Perhaps the doctor would be the better for a vacation. I have no time for a vacation, Joseph. Besides, my daughter is sick. Blood poisoning. I couldn't leave her. Oh, so I had forgotten. Joseph, I want to talk to you. Don't answer me. Don't pay any attention to what I am saying. Just listen. Yes, Herr Doctor. Joseph Erlich was right. He was right, wasn't he? You can answer yes or no. He was right, Herr Doctor. He proved it was salvasan, didn't he? Didn't he? Yes, he proved it, Herr Doctor. And it stands to reason that if there is a chemical compound that kills spirilla, there must be another one to kill bacilli. It stands to reason, Herr Doctor. Only... Only what? Well, even Erlich had to stop with salvasan. I have read how he experimented for years to destroy the trypanosomes of sleeping sickness, but they were not destroyed. They were not even put to sleep. Very bad joke. Oh, yes. I agree, Herr Doctor. Joseph, this coltan derivative, this prontosil I have been working with, it does strange things. It kills bacteria, Joseph. Have you noticed it? I have noticed it. It kills bacteria in the body of a rat, but not in a test tube. But salvasan will work even in an old shoe. Some men there is a mistake. And it is not with Erlich. It is with Dorma. What are you laughing at? Well, perhaps you are only putting them to sleep, Herr Doctor. You know, like Erlich with his trypanosomes. Putting them to sleep? Don't know whether... Oh, excuse me, please, if I have said so. Erlich, his early theory of atropsy. Recite it to me, Joseph, and slowly, please. Atropsy is the theory that bacteria are caused to starve in the midst of plenty. The chemical agent introduced does not kill the bacteria, but renders them static. That's it. Static. Sleeping, unable to multiply. Proceed. This being the case, they cannot for any length of time remain alive in the body. For them, the body's own defensive forces, the white blood cells, kill them off down to the last one. And there are no white blood cells in a test tube. Excellent, Joseph. Excellent. We have made great progress today. All through the night, the lights burned brightly in Herr Doctor Dorma's laboratory. And then early the next morning, as he was about to throw himself from the cot, red-eyed and exhausted, the door opened. It was Joseph. Herr Doctor Dorma. Yes, what is it? I have bad news. Your daughter... Erlich, oh, Lippe gotte, I had forgotten. Tell me, Joseph. She is very bad, Herr Doctor. The blood poisoning has spread through the whole arm. Help me, Joseph. Find my shoes, my hat. I must go to her at once. Lippe gotte. And all from the prick of a sewing needle. But you must hurry, Herr Doctor, if... If what? If you wish to be there in time. You mean they have given her up? The experts, the specialists? Stop looking at your feet and answer me. It is blood poisoning. Blood poisoning? Blood... blood poisoning. Joseph, those tubes on the table, cork them carefully, put them in my bag. Also a hypodermic. Hurry! Blood poisoning. What is blood poisoning but the presence of bacteria in the human body? You mean you are going to inject your own daughter with an untried drug? Untried? Untried? I have tried it on a thousand mice and rats and guinea pigs. The experts have given her up, haven't they? There is no cure known to medicine, they say. Very well. They have had their day in court. Now that everything else has failed, let's give chemotherapy a chance. Herr Doctor Domeck's daughter was duly injected with Prontosyl, a derivative of that stinking, nauseating mess, coal tar, and she duly recovered. And in 1939 Herr Doctor Gerhard Domeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Of course he wasn't permitted to accept it. Prontosyl saves human lives, and that is contrary to the philosophy of a man named Hitler. You are listening to The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by DuPont. Our play, The Weapon That Saves Lives, stars Edmund Law as narrator. He tells the story of man's never-ending effort to harness chemistry to cure disease, a search which has given us sulfanilamide. As our story continues, science is about to take its last step in the search for a substance that will destroy bacteria in the human body. One more step and the cycle is complete. Prontosyl is primarily a dye, a chemical compound. The cure of power must reside in some small fragment of this complicated structure. So the men of science went to work. And then one day in Paris, Monsieur and Madame Trefewil, working together, announced they had solved the mystery of what in Prontosyl destroys bacteria. It was a compound called para-aminobenzene sulfanamide. Listener, does that name strike a familiar note, or have you forgotten a little Viennese student named Gelmold? It took 27 years of painstaking experimentation, of research and medical progress by scientists of several nations to work backward to the full understanding of his legacy. Coincidence? Of course. The magic world, sulfanilamide, spread throughout the world. In England, in Germany, in France, and in America, doctors made use of its extraordinary power to destroy the deadly bacteria of... Leningitis. Mastoditis. But not pneumonia. Scarlet fever. Peritonitis. Child bed fever. But not pneumonia. Strep throat. Trachoma. Gonorrhea. Why not pneumonia? It's caused by the same type of bacteria. Why not pneumonia? Let me see now. If we were to alter the sulfanilamide molecule by adding hydrogen atoms... And carbon, doctor. Let's try carbon with one atom of nitrogen. Why? Well, that's pyridine. That's what it is, doctor. And that's what we'll call it. Sulfapyridine. Or pneumonia. Thus far, gentlemen, we have tried and tested sulfanilamide, sulfapyridine, and sulfathiazole. I now wish to call your attention to a new derivative. Sulfadiazine. The incidence of nausea is only 12%. The lowest in the entire sulfur family. Sulfadiazine. Perfected by an American. Dr. R. O. Roblin, Jr. And now for the final chapter, we look in on Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. Dr. E. K. Marshall, Jr. and his associates are at work on another sulfur derivative. Sulfoguonidine. Well, it shows high activity against streptococcus and pneumonia infections. But it has one fault, gentlemen. It is very poorly absorbed in the intestinal tract. It lingers there. It doesn't pass out of the system. I propose to forget it, to put it on the shelf. Perhaps someday it may prove... Pardon me. Yes? This is the Department of Health, Huntington, West Virginia. Yes? There's an epidemic broke out in the area. Bacillary dysentery. And we need help. How many cases? Almost 50. We're given the usual treatment, but doesn't seem to help. You're not sure of doctors, are you? No, no, it isn't that. We thought maybe you fellas up there at Johns Hopkins had something that could be used... There's nothing new been discovered lately that can be used to help. Wait a minute. Did you say bacillary dysentery? That's what I said. Right in the intestinal tract. Well, hold everything, doctor. I'm coming right over. And thus the cycle is complete. Paracelsus said that chemistry could be used in the treatment of disease. Wendell Henry Perkin, 300 years later, tried to prove he was right. And through the medium of coal tar, discovered aniline dyes. A Viennese student named Gelmo then produced sulfanilamide as an improved coloring matter, not knowing the miracle he had wrought. Then Dr. Domek accomplished what Perkin had set out to do almost a hundred years before. And finally, the trefewels in Paris in 1935 isolated sulfanilamide. The discovery of Gelmo in 1908. Coincidence? Of course. And now 1943, a foxhole. On Guadalcanal. Keep your head down, Red. That Jack's still up there in that tree. I ain't worrying about him. I got something else on my mind. Like what, for instance? Like that mortar they got in dragging the other side of the hill. I'll have to have it set up by now. Uh-huh. And then? And then, Chum, they're gonna start blubbing them over at us. Crump, crump, crump. Slow and regular. Just like that. Till they find the range. We'd better be getting out of here. Kid, you ain't so bright for a Marine. How many trees can you count from here? One, two, three, four, five, six, nine. Right. Each one with a little monkey all waiting to let you have it in the gut. That sulfanilamide won't help you if you get it in the gut, Chum. Ain't nothing can help you if you get it in the gut. Well, not bad for the first one. Next one will be about ten feet closer. How can you sit there and wait for it like this? What else I got to do? Go to a movie. Keep your drawers on, Tommy. What did I tell you? Boy, can I call him. Ten feet. Yeah, this one's gonna be it, kid. Right in the corner pocket. Maybe we'll get it in the gut. And when it lands, holler. Holler even if you ain't hit. Why should I do that? Monkeys in the trees will fire off their guns as a signal, and maybe we'll be left in peace till it's dark and we can beat it. What makes you think them snipers won't come down and finish us off? Why should they? They're happy up there in the trees with them coconuts. Now, remember when you hear it yell. Well, General, it was pleased to have met you. Yeah, me too, Red. Well, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here, too. Hey, kid. I got it. I got it. Red. Red. Yeah, nice going, kid. Only I really got it in the leg. How about you? I said, I got it. I got it. I said, kid. Right in the corner pocket, all right. Well, Red, you're all alone now. Keep your brains working. All depends on you. Now, stop a minute. If they get dirty hand off that leg, think. You've got to think or you'll sunk. Now, let's see now. What do regulations say? When no help is at hand, take out the boxes off an illimited tablet and eat two. Okay. So I'm eating them. Now, what next? Sprinkle the powder on the open wound. Okay, so I'm sprinkling it. You lie quiet and don't move. How can I move with this leg? I didn't have to remember that one. And now what? Nothing, I guess. Boy, I wouldn't give her a little snooze. Don't worry, Red, you'll be okay. Everybody says that self-analyzed stuff is a nuts. I wonder how they come to invent it. Stupid question. I guess I'm getting sleepy. How'd they come to invent anything? Guy gets up one morning and the first thing he knows, he's invented something just like that. That's the way they're sure. That's it. He's still on a beam, Red. It's the same. I'd like to know who that guy was that invented it. I'd like to tell him thanks. I'd like to tell him... My name is Trefewan. Together with my wife, I isolated sulfanilamide from the chemical compound, promtosyl. Hey, Dr. Dormack. I use promtosyl chemotherapeutically to destroy bacteria. Paul Ehrlich is the name. I invented chemotherapy. P. Garmor speaking. I discovered sulfanilamide out of coal tar. William Henry Perkin. He brought coal tar to the attention of the world by producing aniline dyes from it. My name is Oriolus Theophrastus von Hohenheim. You will come to know me in future generations as Paracelsus the great physician. It shall be my task to convert to man's good usage the things of the earth, that they may cure him in his bed of pain. Seeking out his ills and destroying them. The better to prolong his corporeal existence before Almighty God. And here is Edmund Lowe, star of this evening's Cavalcade. Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. And now it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Dormack. He's the director of the New York Times. He's the director of the New York Times. Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and now it's my special privilege this evening to introduce to the audience of the Cavalcade of America the Deputy Surgeon General of the Army of the United States, Brigadier General George F. Lowe. It has been a pleasure tonight to listen to this drama of the work of the sulfur drugs in combating infections. Many of these infections, even four or five years ago, were labeled incurable. We have come a long way in a few years, but there is still much to be done. One of the biggest jobs ahead, and I mean in the immediate months ahead, is that of ensuring proper medical care for our men in the armed forces. We cannot and we will not allow a single American soldier to die for lack of medical attention. That is a big job, and we are doing everything humanly possible to ease pain and prevent death. Today we face death in many forms on battlefields throughout the world. We need now, not tomorrow or next month or next year, but now, 9,000 more physicians and surgeons in the Army, men who will put service above self, men who will sacrifice a part of their lives or even their lives to offer their skill where it is needed most, on the battle lines to restore broken and torn and burned bodies. They are just as vitally needed behind the battle lines to keep our fighting forces force the efficient dominating organization it is today. Your Army needs medical men more than it has ever needed them before. It is no exaggeration to say that we can lose this war without them. However, I am confident America's doctors will meet this challenge. Thank you, General Allen. Next week, the Cavalcade of America will salute the CBs, the men of the Navy who do construction work under fire of battle. Our play is called Dear Funny Face. Dear Funny Face was the way he used to salute her in his letters from the South Pacific. Our stars are Wendy Barry of the Motion Pictures and Alfred Drake of the Broadway stage hit Oklahoma. Be with us next week when Cavalcade presents Dear Funny Face starring Wendy Barry and Alfred Drake. The orchestra and musical score tonight were under the direction of Donald Buries. This is Clayton Carlier sending best wishes from Cavalcade sponsor, the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. This program came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.
