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Show Sulfa Drugs Cut Deaths From Meningitis, Report CHICAGO. An army medical officer offi-cer reports that there has been an "amazing reduction" in the meningitis menin-gitis death rate from 39 per cent in the first World war to less than 3.5 per cent now due entirely .'to new chemical treatment, principally the use of "sulfa" drugs. Col. Henry M. Thomas Jr., of the fourth service command, described in the Journal of the American Medical Med-ical Association a series of 1,518 cases of meningococci meningits (inflammation of the three membranes mem-branes that envelop the brain and spinal cord) and septicemia (infection (infec-tion of the blood). The most desperately ill patients sometimes require additional kinds of treatment, he said, but for more than 95 per cent of all patients the only specific form of therapy was drugs properly given. "If all patients could be given a diagnosis and treated at the onset of the first symptom, it is my firm belief be-lief that the mortality would be re-Hnrf re-Hnrf tn 7pro " he wrnt. |
