I was watching a documentary film about WW II and if a soldier was shot they were to take sulfur tablets (according to one squad leader). What was the belief regarding what this was to do?
sulfa, not sulfur
They were sulpha tablets, and were some form of pennicilin or something- but that’s all I got- I don’t have google time right now…
Pre-penicillin actually, but not by much.
Sulfa based antibiotics are still in use today.
In some WWII movies they show the medic sprinkling some kind of powder into the wound. Would that be sulfa also or something else?
Yes, probably sulfa.
If the medic tears open an envelope and sprinkles a yellowish powder over the wound, it was sulfa powder.
Interestingly, my first awareness of sulfa drugs came about while reading James Herriot’s books about his career in veterinary medicine. In the later books, he writes something about how different his post-war practice was to the pre-war days because of sulfa drugs, which resulted in losing a lot fewer patients.
Ahhhhh… :smack:
Thanks.
Huh…I always thought those were coagulation powders, or something. Especially since they seemed to use more of them on bigger wounds.
Maybe in an Enduring Freedom movie, not in a WWII movie. Although they may have, or may have been believed to have, a positive effect on coagulation.
WWII Movie: Medic crawls through gunfire to reach wounded solider.
Opens packet of sulfur powder and sprinkles over soldier’s wound.
Wounded soldier “Dude! You farted!”
Some of the soldiers who took the sulfa drugs experienced low blood sugar reactions, a totally unexpected development. Turned out that in some people at least, the sulfa part of the sulfa antibiotic molecule was causing insulin to be released by the pancreas. That initial chance observations led to the development of a new class of drugs to treat diabetes - SULFonylureas (the capital letters indicating their relationship to the sulfa class of drugs). If you take or know someone who takes glyburide (Diabeta, Micronase), gliclazide (Diamicron), glipizide (Glucotrol), you now know the story behind their treatment.
Yes. Pre-sulfa and pre-penicillin, there was not much to do for infections except give the patient symptomatic relief until their own defences fought off the bacteria, if they could; recovery was slow and uncertain. Then for a few golden years while the bacteria had negligible resistance, vets saw miracle cure after miracle cure: animals that had been close to death would be frisking around like a yearling in a matter of days. Must’ve been an exciting time to practise medicine.