INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Abstract

In the preparation of these reviews, during each succeeding year of the war, I have expected my task to be easier because of apparent distractions in investigative work. Instead, there has been an ever increasing amount of important contributions to the knowledge of infections to review. First came studies of many sulfonamide compounds, their modes of administration, their pharmacology and their effect on many infections; then followed the introduction of penicillin, its route of administration, its pharmacology and its effect on various diseases, and now such studies are being made on substances which attack gram-negative bacilli. So rapidly have advances been made that for certain diseases sulfonamide therapy is already regarded as old fashioned and serum therapy is only rarely used. The full import of all these discoveries during the turmoil of war will be even more fully appreciated later. This era is as important as the Pasteur-Koch epoch in