• U.S.

Medicine: Milestone: Aug. 5, 1940

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TIME

Young Dr. René Jules Dubos of the Rockefeller Institute, recently found a bacillus in common garden soil which secreted a substance that destroyed germs of the coccus type (streptococcus, pneumococcus, etc.). In the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine’s Proceedings, Researcher Dubos and co-workers reported last week injecting his “gramicidin” into cows afflicted with mastitis (inflammation of the udder) caused by a streptococcus. Because of complications, the germs were not killed in all cases. But gramicidin was proved to have a definite bactericidal effect. Next milestone: tests of gramicidin on human beings.

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