Mrs. McC-brought in her baby boy, aged 5 months, with severe eczema. From his return home from the hospital on the tenth day after his birth, he had been afflicted with oozing, cracking skin on the head, hands, face, buttocks and generally in patches on arms and legs. Scales, crusts, foul odor and intense itching were objective data. He had radiating cracks around the rectum and penis.
His first medication was Carcinoma K. and after three weeks, Variolinum 30., three doses, one each morning on successive days. This did permit some sleep for the baby and his parents. The third visit brought out some interesting parental data. Accused of feeding the baby a sulpha drug, the mother first denied it completely, then fell silent, while I went after a powder of Sulphanilamide.
For this baby presented a curious spectacle, which I had only seen after overwhelming doses of the sulpha drugs in the hospital service in the days when they were used and abused with numerous deaths by accumulation of the crystals in the Kidneys. The baby was bloated-face, hands and body-so that he could not open his eyes, and his hands were dark, slaty blue. He had not urinated in thirty hours.
The story was as follows: At two months pregnancy, the mother was thought to have a tubal pregnancy. Her abdomen was opened, tubal infection with uterine pregnancy being found. The wound was closed and she went to term. This was the baby. My own deduction was that a sulpha powder was liberally scattered into the pelvis and abdomen before closing. One dose of Sulphanilamide 1M. cured completely, promptly (three days), and permanently to date. LAPEER, MICHIGAN.
DISCUSSION.
DR. ELIZABETH WRIGHT HUBBARD: Dr. Rood always has interesting papers. I wonder how many of us have ever given sulfanilamide in potency to counteract the bad effect of the sulfa drugs. I should like to hear the experience of others in using that as a counter-irritant, because I see so many cases that have been drowsed with sulfa drugs in the regular manner and have had a very protracted recovery and many miserable symptoms because of it.
DR. HARVEY FARRINGTON: I have used sulfanilamide in potency in two or three cases. I cannot say that the results were spectacular and, as a matter of fact, in my practice of many years I have seldom given antidotes, even Nux vomica, which is supposed to be a sort of blanket prescription for all the ill effects of drugs. I rather tried to follow a statement by Dunham. He said, “If you can get a clear picture of the original disease, modified by subsequent treatment that is necessary.
DR. WILBUR K. BOND: I intend to bring that out a little later in my paper about the antidoting of Sulfa drugs by higher potencies of the particular sulfa which is used, if possible. If the particular sulfa drug is not known, I have a combination in my office made up of the two leading sulfa drugs, which is a 50M of sulfathiazole and I have really seen it do a lot of good work when it comes to removing that obstacle to recovery.
DR. ALLAN D. SUTHERLAND: The sulfa drugs now are changing rather rapidly in this respect, the new sulfa substances, so- called are being developed all the time. The leading sulfa drugs are sulfathiazole, sulfanilamide, sulfamerazine, sulfaguanidine, and sulfadiazine, and the last three names are the most commonly used.
Very seldom do we find sulfanilamide used now, it is too toxic. The only time that is used is in surgery and usually not in a peritoneal cavity but between layers of the abdominal wound after they have sewed the peritoneum and before they sew the muscle and skin. That is supposed to prevent infection. Whether it actually does or not one cant tell because those patients often are not infected anyway.
I read an interesting article some time ago-this is a little aside from the point, so I am out of order and if you want to rap me down, it is all right. The article dealt with wound infection, so called, following surgical operation. The tenor of the article was to effect that many of those so-called wound infections are due to irritation produced by the talcum powder used on the gloves and not due actually to a bacterial invasion.
It was advocated that the usual talcum powder should not be used but some other substance like starch which is found to be relatively innocuous so far as its irritating properties in tissue are concerned.
DR. MARION BELLE ROOD (closing discussion): The title of the paper was to have been PSORIC MANIFESTATIONS: ECHINOCOCCUS, but I asked permission to change it to PSORIC MANIFESTATIONS:INFANTILE ECZEMA because it is a sample selected for its simplicity from a series of cases, unselected, consecutive, as they come which are being treated as nearly as possible as Hahnemann directed in his Chronic Diseases.
