The only agent of proved value in the specific treatment of pneumonia heretofore has been antipneumococcus serum. While effective in many types of pneumococcic pneumonia, it has been costly, frequently unavailable, often tedious and occasionally impossible to give. The advent of sulfapyridine has given us another effective specific agent, and this time one that is comparatively inexpensive, more readily available and more easily administered.
During the year that has passed since Whitby1 described experiments in which sulfapyridine afforded complete protection in mice against as high as 10,000 lethal doses of pneumococci, a large number of articles have appeared in the medical literature concerning the use of this new therapeutic agent.
On the experimental side, Fleming2 has found that the drug retards the growth of pneumococci in human blood in concentrations as low as 3 mg. per hundred cubic centimeters. He3 subsequently demonstrated that the blood of patients