Volume 67 · Issue 11 · 1949

Since 1944 streptomycin has made its advent and proved its efficacy in the treatment of certain forms of human tuberculosis (1, 2). Accumulated experiences with this drug however disclosed its limitations among which may be mentioned the drug resistance and toxicity developed on prolonged administration. In China, streptomycin is still considered as an expensive drug and economic burden to the patient adds another difficulty in recommending its use. In those cases of tuberculosis which do not require prolonged streptomycin therapy, these shortcomings would be minimized. Streptomycin is more effective in acute forms of tuberculosis and in cases in which the number of tubercle bacilli is relatively small. Under these conditions the therapeutic effect of streptomycin usually precedes the development of toxicity or drug resistance.

Since 1947 two relatively new antibiotics, aureomycin and chloromucetin, have emerged from the research laboratories and have been recognized to bear new therapeutic possibilities. Interesting is the fact that aureomycin, obtained from the cultures of Strephomyces aureofaciens, and chloromycetin, from those of Streptomyces venezuelae, possess very similar pharmacological properties, having been employed more or less on the same clinical basis in such diseases as typhus fever, Rochy Mountain spotted fever, Q fever, primary atypical pneumonia, undulant fever, and typhoid fever.

Perforation of the gall-bladder as a complication developing during the course of typhoid fever is not so rare as it is generally supposed. In reviewing the literature Haung (1) in 1939 reported a case of a 6 years old child with recovery after operation.

Achalasia of the esophagus is also known as cardiospasm, megaesophagus, and idiopathic dilatation of the esophagus. It was first described as a disease entity in 1674 by Willis (1) and later by Purton in 1821 (2). It denotes a condition in which the contents of the esophagus find difficulty in emptying into the stomach.

The use of costal cartilage for the correction of saddle nose is not new. Von Mangoldt described the operation in 1899. The insertion of the cartilage can either be done externally through an incision between the eye-brows or across the bridge of the nose, or internally along the muco-cutaneous margin.

Congential insensitiveness to pain is a rare anomaly. It is sometimes called "universal insensitiveness to pain" (1) and "congenital general pure analgesia" (2). Patients with this anomaly are indifferent to all kinds of injuries, and very little is really known about this disease.

In recent years a great deal of work has been done on the proteolytic hydrolysate of protein, which is to supply the essential amino acids for nutrition and in place of protein when protein cannot be taken by mouth or digested or when the protein intake is insufficient. Administered in adequate amounts, it prevents protein depletion, restores previous losses, or builds up new body proteins.

Citrinin has been known as an antibiotic substance (1-6). Wang, Tu, and Chia (7) have further demonstrated the bacteriostatic action of its derivatives. The present report deals with a quantitative study on the in vitro activity of citrinin on human, bovine and avian types of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

After extensive trials of the antibiotic, streptomycin, in the treatment of various forms of tuberculosis in human patients, most clinicians have come to consider this-new antibiotic as the best available. However, the therapeutic potentialities of this agent are greatly limited and its use is sometimes discarded, because of the relatively short duration of its antibacterial action, and the ease in the development of resistance. The latter is considered undesirable because in the first place, organisms re8istant to streptomycin in vitro have been proven to be also resistant to the action of streptomycin in vivo, and when still virulent, will render further treatment ineffective (1).

The early diagnosis of cancer is still one of the most difficult problems in medical practice. Any new methods usually merit serious consideration by the medical profession.