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Show SoilTermed Great Laboratory For Production of New Druqs Soil not only is the source of life-supporting life-supporting food but also is a great laboratory in which are produced many new-found drugs for curing diseases of man and beast against which even good nutrition cannot prevail, according to Alden Stahr and Dr. Boyd Woodruff in an article arti-cle in Capper's Farmer. "These are the so-called miracle drugs, first of which was tyrothric-in," tyrothric-in," says the article. "Then came penicillin, used extensively during the war, followed by actoinomyein, streptothricin, clavicin and guma-gicin. guma-gicin. Others have been discovered and more are in prospect." Among the things scientists have seen and identified, Stahr and Woodruff Wood-ruff point out, are: One-celled plants, molds, green plants, animals, ani-mals, protozoa, worms and nematodes. nema-todes. And these soil inhabitants do more than provide fertility to th soil. In their struggle for existence, many of them throw off waste products prod-ucts and create chemical substances sub-stances which are deadly to disease germs. Thus a very special strain or species of fungi yielded penicillin, penicil-lin, which shared the credit with blood plasma and the sulfa drugs in greatly reducing the wound mortality mor-tality rate in World War II as compared with the First World war. "The soil," conclude the writers, "is so complex a mixture that there must be many other healing agents found in it. Many of man's 2,000 diseases still are unconquered. Most prevalent of all, of course, is the common cold, which causes more economic loss and discomfort to people than any other disease and, weakening the system, paves the way for more serious ailments." |