The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-04-17
Netu Hope Ir1 Sepsis
By N. ADDINGToN BRUCH

,. There is reason for the liyeliest public in terest in Dr. Hugh Young's recent announce ment of the remarkable results obtained by him and other physicians in the treatment of septicemia by q substance 10 which the name of mercuro-chrome has been given.
 Every year septicemia, or suppurative blood poisoning takes a heavy toll in human life Sometimes 1t is a poisoning of slow and in sidious development, as when it is due to the long continued presence of so-called focal in- lection. Sometimes it develops with star ting suddenness, following infection of cut or of the wound of a surgical operation.
 In any event, once sepsis makes any marked headway aginst the natural defensive forces of the blood, the outlook becomes grave. Up to the time of Dr, Youngs announcement the situation, medically speaking, was cor rectly summarized in Dr. Richard Cabot's frank statement:
 We have no medicinal treatment what soever for septicemia. If the sepsis is due to wound, we can drain that wound, and if to an abscess we can open the abscess and the patient may get we'll. But if these con ditions are not present, the patient will prob ably die, though at any time the person s own resistance may assert itself'
 In the light of Dr. Youngs findings it would seem that a far less gloomy picture may now be drawn. The rnereuro- chrome treatment, to judge from results reported in that ultra-conservative medical periodical. the Journal of the American Medical Asso- citation, constitutes medicinal remedy of as- tonishing potency. Even advanced cases of septcemia are recorded as having yielded to it.
 It is a remedy composed of mercury and a germicidal dye, and is administered not by mouth but by injection into a vein. Its first effects may be to aggravate symptoms, but in proportion as it overwhelms the pus- producing organisms rampant in the blood the patients condition changes for the bet ter Complete cures in a few days are re- ported by Dr. Young.
 Thus, in a case of septicemia caused by colon infection, a manIwas admitted to Johps Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in virtually a dying state. He was delirions, with weak pulse, and a rising Temperature.
 Mercuro-chrome having been injected his temperature at first rose still higher, then dropped in six hours from 104 degrees to 97. A few hours later the patient became rational, the temperature was normal and he declared he felt quite we'll. Within a week he was discharged from the hospital cured, Here is Dr. Young's comment:
 This is the first case to be recorded of cure of colon bacillus septicemia effected by the intravenous injection of mercuro-chroms. The rapidity of restoration from imminent death to normal health was almost unbe- lieyable."
 In other cases reported by Dr. Young cures were effected in cases of septicemia due likewise to colon infection, to infection of n wound and to various abscess-forming infec- tions. To be sure, the claim is not made thaf to- I. iu cnAntfiof fdr all germs productive of sepsis. But it is claimed, with reason, that it has wide and varied field of usefulness.
 And most assuredly. if mercuro-ehrome' s future bears out it's present promise, its ap- plication for curative purposes Will take rank as q medical discovery of the first magni- tude. The complete conquest of sepsis will then be in sight as it never has been up to now. 1sA.5 k$F