Medicine: Sulfachievements

—A cheering fact about meningococcus meningitis was reported from the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego. Of 50 men ingitis patients treated with sulfa drugs (TIME, Nov. 30), 48 recovered. The two who died did so almost as soon as they reached the hospital, might have lived if they had been treated soon enough. The death rate from spinal meningitis, like that of cholera or bubonic plague, used to be about 70% of all cases. Anti-meningococcus serum, which came into use about 1907, cut the mortality to around 25%. But in World War I meningitis was the sixth cause of death in the U.S. Army, killed 1,737 soldiers. The sulfa drugs, if used soon enough, may now cut the mortality to the vanishing point.

—Acute diarrhea kills thousands of babies yearly. Doctors do not know its cause or cure. But Drs. Allan H. Twyman and George R. Horton of Indianapolis reported in the Journal of the A.M.A. last week that they had obtained hopeful results on newborn infants with succinylsulfathiazole, a sulfa drug used in some other digestive infections. Of eleven babies treated, only two died (the doctors think those two might have been cured with largerdoses). Of eleven untreated babies, four died and the others were sick twice as long as the sulfa-treated ones.