Taming the Demon Under the Microscope Quiz

Answer: Brandenburg, Prussia

Gerhard Domagk (1895-1964) was a medical student when he enlisted in WWI. After being wounded in 1914, he spent the rest of the war as a medic where he saw soldiers die of post-operative infections. Soldiers arrived in field hospitals covered with dirt from the trenches and shortages meant sterilization of instruments was difficult, doctors' assistants were ungloved, and few people wore masks.

After the war, he returned to his medical studies and graduated in 1921. He served as a lecturer in physiology at the University of Muenster before becoming a researcher for Bayer in 1927. At Bayer he discovered that Prontosil, a red dye linked to sulphanilamide, cured bacterial infections in lab animals without harming the animals themselves. Although he did not include this in the paper announcing his discovery, he also successfully treated his daughter with Prontosil when she developed an abscess after an accident drove a sewing needle eye-first into her hand.

Answer: gas gangrene

Gas gangrene was often fatal, even after doctors amputated affected limbs. It's usually cased by strains of Clostridium but can be caused by other microorganisms, including anaerobic strains of streptococci. Crowded conditions in field hospitals also led to cholera outbreaks. Between 100,000 and 200,000 German soldiers died from infection during WWI.

Answer: Paul Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) worked under Robert Koch (1843-1910) at the Berlin Institute of Infectious Disease (now the Robert Koch Institute) where he researched serums and autoimmunity. In 1906 he became the director of a private research foundation, the Georg Speyer House. There, he discovered his "magic bullet." Arsphenamine (Salvarsan), an organic compound containing arsenic, killed the microorganisms which cause syphilis and African trypanosomiasis. Salvarsan was toxic, causing liver damage, but was the first effective chemical cure for a disease.

For his work in immunology, Ehrlich shared the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Ilya Ilych Mechnikov (1845-1916). Jules Bordet (1870-1961) isolated the Bortadella pertussis bacterium that causes whooping cough and won the 1919 Nobel Prize.

Answer: streptococcus

While many strains of streptococcus are benign or cause localized infections, strep can be deadly if it reaches the bloodstream and some strains release toxins. Streptococcus was once a leading cause of maternal death, and group B streptococcus (GBS) can cause meningitis in newborns so women who test positive for GBS are given antibiotics during labor.

Bacteriophage is a virus that attacks bacteria and phage therapy was used to treat infections in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.

Answer: aniline dye

William Perkin (1838-1907) accidentally discovered the first aniline dye (a purple shade he named mauvine) in 1856 while trying to synthesize quinine from coal tar, a discovery which launched the field of organic chemistry. Bayer's main product at the time was dyes, and Domagk's research examined the antimicrobial qualities of dyes developed by Josef Klarer (1898-1953), a Bayer chemist who focused on azo dyes. This focus on dyes meant that when Domagk found a sulfonamide which killed bacteria without harming the surrounding tissue, his new drug turned patients pink.

Answer: Pasteur Institute

Working from the German patent application, scientists at the Pasteur Institute developed a chemical similar to Prontosil which they called Rubiazol. While testing and comparing the two drugs, Daniel Bovert decided to dose a group of mice with the common part of the two drugs, pure sulfanilamide. Those mice did as well as the Prontosil and Rubiazol groups, leading scientists to realize that it wasn't the dye but the sulfanilamide side chain which killed the bacteria.

This also explained why Prontosil worked in animals but not in a petri dish - in order to work, the sulfanilamide had to be enzymatically separated from the dye. Founded by Louis Pasteur in 1887, ten scientists from the Pasteur Institute won Nobel Prizes between 1908 and 2021. The institute isolated the HIV virus in 1983 and was the first to sequence SARS-Co-V-2).

Answer: diethylene glycol

The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act banned adulterants but did not require that drugs prove they were safe. The sulfanilamide tragedy led to the 1938 amendments to the Food and Drug Act which increased the FDA's power to regulate drugs. Frances Kelsey, who later stalled the FDA's approval of thalidomide because of reports of peripheral neuritis (a decision which proved correct when reports appeared of severe birth defects in children exposed prenatally to the drug), was one of the researchers who tracked down the source of the deaths.

Answer: Medicine or Physiology

Domagk won the Nobel Prize for "the discovery of the antibacterial effects of Prontosil." The Nazi government forced him to refuse the prize and arrested him, releasing him a week later. He was able to collect his prize, although not the monetary award, in 1947.

Answer: Pearl Harbor

All of the 2,335 sailors and 68 civilians who died at Pearl Harbor died from trauma and none from infection. Sulfa powder was applied to wounds during initial treatment, and if patients developed gas gangrene, the wounds were re-opened, cleaned, packed with more sulfa, and the patients were administered oral sulfa drugs. WWII soldiers were issued with packets of sulfa powder so it could be applied to wounds in the field, lowering the risk of infection.

Answer: type 2 diabetes

Discovered in 1942, sulfonylureas increase the secretion of insulin by beta cells so can help in type 2 diabetes where the pancreas is creating too little insulin. They cannot be used to treat type 1 diabetes where no insulin is produced. They come with a risk of hypoglycemia but are not associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular death. Sulfa drugs are still used to treat infections, and other sulfa derivatives treat migraines, act as diuretics, and act as protease inhibitors to treat HIV infections and hepatitis C.