GERM-KILLING GLAURAMINE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 149, 18 March 1924, Page 7

GERM-KILLING GLAURAMINE

ANTISEPTICS FROM DYESTUFFS. A remarkable story originating in experiments on the "Western ion , lies behind the discovery of glaurainine, the powerful germ-killer, which attracted the attention of hundreds of doctors at the London Medical Exhibition in Central Hall, AA estininster. The new antiseptic is one of too tiuits of five years’ research work cairieu out by two young Lancashire chemists. Dr. Arnold Renshaw and Air. L’“’ lias H. Fairbrother, M.Sc., both of Manchester. The two young workers (.'•ays a correspondent of the Scotsman ), realising that there was scope for the application of dyestuffs to the wl ole field of antiseptics, examined exhnustivelv the entire range of such ayes as could bo applied to the work,, ai.d their results have shown them y.iich gimps of dyes possess good antiseptic qualities'and which do not. They made ah almost dramatic discovery for example, in regard to the vtliow dye auramine. First, they rested nu] on a Manchester victim of filanaris, an incurable tropical disease, m i inch tiny worms multiply in the blood and glow bigger and bigger until d-’ath supervenes. Taking a drop of the man s blood, they tested it under the r icroseO|X' with a drop of the yellow dye diluted four thousand times. In five minutes all the little wriggling worms were dead. Other microbes succumbed in 15 minutes under one drop of auramine diluted twenty thousand or even forty thousand times; and it is from aur (imino that they have obtained tho new antiseptic nlaurnmine. The high state of dilution in which tho preparation is being used, for nose and ear surgery, for cleaning the skin prior to operations, and otherwise, allows the stain left by the germ-killer to be readilv removed. Its two c iscoverers are now. busy pursuing their indestination s into tho pro portion of other dyestuffs.