Abstract
AN article under this title by Sir Leonard Rogers appeared in NATUBE of December 16, 1939, p. 1103, which presented in very bare outline the history of the use in India of antimony compounds to combat kala-azar. Sir Upendranath Brahmachari, whose work in connexion with the introduction and use of urea stibamine was referred to briefly, has submitted to NATURE a long statement surveying in some detail the work which led up to the preparation of this substance and reporting on the results obtained. He states that, contrary to Sir Leonard Rogers' statement, urea stibamine was not patented, and claims that divergent results obtained by different investigators were due to the fact that various manufacturers put on the market so-called urea stibamine which did not conform to his specification. Reference is also made to the cost of treatment with antimony compounds. Sir Leonard Rogers stated in his article that a course of treatment with urea stibamine cost £3 in 1925. In the intervening years, this has happily been reduced; Sir Upendranath states that urea stibamine is now supplied by the Government at Rs. 1 per gram, and since 1.5 gm. is sufficient for complete cure, the total cost of the drug to-day is now Rs. 1.8 (about 2s. 3d.).This is a reduction on which all who have been concerned are to be congratulated. Yet this cost is still relatively high for a country in which the great majority of the population live dangerously near the starvation line, and there is still room for a rapidly effective and really cheap remedy for kala-
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Antimony Treatment of Kala-azar. Nature 145, 546 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145546b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145546b0