Abstract
TOWARDS the latter part of 1920, German investigators announced the discovery of a new drug, “Bayer 205,” which had a remarkable action on experimental trypanosomiasis in laboratory animals. It was far more efficacious than any other known remedy, and in addition possessed the great advantage of being therapeutically active in doses which were at least one-sixtieth of the maximum dose tolerated by these animals. It was later proved that horses suffering from dourine could be cured by injections of the drug. Such an active trypanosomicide naturally demanded attention from the point of view of human sleeping sickness. An opportunity offered itself in 1921. An Englishman who had contracted the disease in Africa was treated at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine with almost every known remedy without success. He was seriously ill and was rapidly failing. As a last resort he travelled to Hamburg, where he was given a few injections of the new remedy. The result was immediate improvement and restoration to normal health. This has been maintained to the present time, and there seems every reason to suppose that the cure is a permanent one. Since this first case was treated, numbers of others have received the drug, and in the majority of these it would seem that a permanent cure has probably been attained.
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Antidotes against Sleeping-Sickness. Nature 113, 467 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113467a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113467a0