Infectious diseases; seventeenth annual review of significant publications.

Abstract

THE ADVANCES made in the field of infectious diseases during the last two decades are reflected in these annual reviews by the prominence given them. Indeed, the history of these years can be divided into distinct periods based on a succession of epochal therapeutic discoveries. After the first review published in 1935, pneumococcic pneumonias and their treatment with specific antipneumococcic serum held the chief interest up to 1939, when serum was displaced by sulfapyridine. Sulfonamide chemotherapy for many infections dominated interest until 1944. Penicillin was referred to briefly in 1942, the year that serotherapy last was mentioned. Two years later penicillin treatment rendered sulfonamide chemotherapy almost obsolete. Penicillin and the discovery of a surprising variety of other antibiotic agents placed them as leading subjects since 1944. At present, effects of adrenocorticotropic hormones on infectious diseases are under intensive study. So far, however, aside from immediate beneficial effects in rheumatic disease