From the beginning of the war search has been made for the ideal antiseptic. This must satisfy two conditions — it must be powerful enough to kill the germs of infection in wounds, and yet be as harmless as possible to the tissues of the patient’s body. In particular, it must be innocuous to the white blood corpuscles — the leucocytes — for they fight and kill the bacteria of infection and contain a substance, trypsin, which, when liberated into the bloodstream, lowers the power of the blood to destroy bacteria. What was wanted was a gun to kill bacteria only, and to spare the warrior cells and tissues, a drug in fact like Ehrlich’s salvarsan (600), with a definite and specific effect on bacteria, and on nothing else.
That such a drug has been discovered seems to be clear from the report of the work of Dr Browning, Director of the Bland-Sutton Institute for Clinical Pathology, Middlesex Hospital, which has just been presented to the Medical Research Committee. It is signed by Dr Browning, Dr Kennaway, Dr Thornton, and Miss Gulbrausen, and is given in full in the British Medical Journal. The drug is called “flavine,�� from its yellow colour. It kills the germs causing ordinary abscesses in solutions of one part in 200,000, but to stop the activities of the white blood corpuscles it is necessary to use a solution 400 times stronger, that is, one in 500. Carbolic acid, on the other hand, prevents the activities of white blood corpuscles in solutions of one part in 500, but will not kill germs until the strength of one part in 250 has been reached.
The reports on the antiseptic are very encouraging. In a paper by Mr Ligat the case is recorded of a man who had his leg amputated. “The patient came under my care with a very septic stump. It had been treated with eusol for three weeks, but showed no definite improvement in the suppurative condition. After four days’ treatment with flavine the wound had entirely ceased to discharge.” Eusol has proved a great help as an antiseptic in this war, yet while it kills the germ referred to at 1 in 1,000 concentration, it interferes with the white blood corpuscles at 1 in 4,000. Thus long before it is strong enough to do its antiseptic work it has interfered with the work of the “warrior” cells.