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The efficiency of salvarsan in the cure of syphilis in the early stages is due, first, to the large amount of it that can be introduced into the body without killing the patient, and second, to the promptness with which it gets to the source of trouble.
There are even good reasons for believing that the patient who is insufficiently treated with salvarsan is at times worse off than the patient who, unable to afford the drug at all, has had to depend for his cure entirely on mercury.
In spite of this qualifying statement it may be reiterated, however, that good treatment with salvarsan and mercury reduces the risk of infecting others in the ordinary relations of life practically to the vanishing point, and of course reduces, but not entirely eliminates, the dangers of the intimate contacts.
At the present time the use of both mercury and salvarsan in the treatment of the disease is the most widely accepted practice, and seems to offer the greatest assurance of cure. +The Value of Salvarsan.+ Salvarsan has done for the treatment of syphilis certain things of the most far-reaching importance from the standpoint of the interests of society at large.
Only innocence pays the spiritual price of syphilis. The very ones whose punishment it should be are the most indifferent to it, and the least influenced by fear of it in their pursuit of sexual gratification. I always recall with a shock the utterance of a university professor in the days when salvarsan was expected to cure syphilis at a single dose.
It was not long before it was found that not one but several doses of salvarsan were necessary in the treatment of syphilis, and soon many physicians of wide experience began to call in mercury again for help when salvarsan proved insufficient for cure.
Salvarsan has not been proved of value. Intestinal antisepsis may be attained more or less successfully by the administration of yeast or of lactic acid ferments together with suitable diet. The nuclein of yeast may be of some value in promoting a leukocytosis. It has not been shown, however, that the polymorphonuclear leukocyte increase caused by nuclein has made phagocytosis more active.
They have now satisfied themselves that quinine for malaria, salvarsan for yaws, and other effective remedies for common ailments are more useful and more readily obtained than was the helpful intervention of the anítos, or spirits of the dead, while the methods and results of modern surgery are a source of unending amazement and satisfaction to them.
Pointing out the difficulties in developing the manufacture of salvarsan, he explains how the process was originally discovered by an organic chemist, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, co-operating with a German dye company, the crude material coming from the dye plants, the product itself strongly resembling dyes, "containing arsenic instead of part of their nitrogen."
All the earlier use of salvarsan in the treatment of syphilis was carried out with this idea in view, and the remarkable way in which the symptoms vanished before the large doses used encouraged the belief that Ehrlich's ideal for it had been fulfilled.
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