Drugs: To Wipe Out Athlete’s Foot

Just about everyone and, inevitably, his brother has had athlete’s foot. The various fungi which masquerade under that name annually infect an estimated 40 million people in the U.S., 2,000,000 of them badly enough to send them sprinting to a doctor. But until recently, doctors could recommend little more than the various medications available without prescription on drugstore counters. And those assorted fungistatics (fungus retarders), whether liquid, powder or ointment, often did no better than a so-so job.

Now doctors can offer better advice. Tinactin, the first simple, locally applied fungicide (fungus killer), has already won 60% of the anti-fungal prescription market in the five months it has been available. Says Dr. Harry Robinson Jr. of the University of Maryland Medical School: “If the diagnosis of athlete’s foot is correct—and often it is not—then treatment with Tinactin is 100% effective.” The colorless, odorless, stainless liquid has no known side effects, and it works as well on nearly every other form of external fungus infection. In fact, Tinactin’s impressive qualities have already earned New Jersey’s Schering Corp. permission from the Food and Drug Administration to call the new medicine a “cure.”