Principles and Practice of Chemotherapy: with Special Reference to the Specific and General Treatment of Syphilis

Abstract

HITHERTO most of the literature of chemotherapy has been written by chemists, or at least by investigators with a bias towards chemistry. It is wont to consist of descriptions, in series, of complex organic compounds contributed by the chemist, to which his biological colleagues, the pharmacologist and the parasitologist, add ‘toxicities’ and ‘curative doses,’ the latter being the minimum quantity of each substance found necessary to cure some particular infection induced experimentally in one of the lower animals. If the ratio between the two factors is favourable for any member of the series, that substance becomes a possible candidate for clinical trials, so that the clinician has the last word in deciding whether the work of his chemical and biological colleagues is to have the chance of becoming a practical success. Such practical successes are rare, and are far more limited in their application than is generally believed, even by that restricted public which concerns itself with matters of scientific interest.

Principles and Practice of Chemotherapy: with Special Reference to the Specific and General Treatment of Syphilis.

By Prof. John A. Kolmer. Pp. xvi + 1106. (Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders Co., 1926.) 55s. net.