posted
This 1911 article by Balfour describes how spirochetes look when they are dying from a dose of Salvorsan. I like the part about the spirochetes running from the bloodstream to the liver, then shaking like dogs in violent contortions, and then becoming limp and lifeless!! Oh-- well, I confess to spirochete death lust!!
quote: If a well-infected chick be given a dose of salvarsan, the peripheral blood is soon cleared, or nearly cleared of spirochaetes.
If then a drop of liver juice be examined by the dark-field method, it will be found swarming with spirochaetes and with highly refractile granules. The source of the latter is soon apparent, for attention will be directed to spirochaetes which are not moving in the usual way, but are in a state of violent contortion, or are, so to speak, shaking themselves to and fro.
Indeed, I cannot give a more apt comparison than by likening their movements to those of dogs which have been in water and are shaking themselves vigorously to dry their coats. The object of the spirochaetes, however, is to rid themselves of the bright spherical granules which can be seen within them and which may or may not be aggregations of the so-called chromatin core.
They are forced along the periplastic sheath and suddenly discharged , so that they become free in the medium and dance hither and thither as tiny, solid, spherical, brilliant white particles.
In process of time the spirochaete loses its activity, becomes difficult to see, and eventually all that is left of it is the limp and lifeless sheath drifting aimlessly in the fluid and liable to be caught up and swept away by some still vigorous parasite. Such a sheath may still retain one or two of the granules which it has been unable to discharge. As may be imagined, the process is most fascinating to watch, and my observations have been confirmed by Captain Fry and Mr. Buchanan, of these laboratories and Captain O'Farrell, R.A.M.C. I may also say that the first-named had previously seen a shedding off of granules by trypanosomes in the peripheral blood of experimental animals, a phenomenon which he is now studying.
>b>It is these spirochaete granules in the liver, spleen and lung, and possibly also in other internal organs, which I believe, invade the red cells.
I think I have seen the penetration occur, but require to make futher observations in order to be certain as to the mode of entry.
Such a chain of events fully explains all the puzzling features which this intracorpuscular infection has hitherto presented, and moreover, brings it into line with the infective granules found in the ticks, for these very closely resemble those seen in liver-juice films both when examined by dark-field method and when stained by the Levaditi process.
Lord Balfour forgot to mention that Salvorsan treated chicks go through a Britney Spears phase like this before they die....
Posts: 696 | From New York | Registered: Aug 2006
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Arsphenamine From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search
The structure of arsphenamine was believed to be A until 2005, when new research suggested the true structure was in fact a mixture of the trimer B and the pentamer CArsphenamine is a drug that was used to treat syphilis and trypanosomiasis. It was the first modern chemotherapeutic agent. Sahachiro Hata discovered the anti-syphilitic activity of this compound in 1908 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich, during a survey of hundreds of newly-synthesized organic arsenical compounds. Ehrlich had theorized that by screening many compounds a drug could be discovered with anti-microbial activity. Ehrlich's team began their search for such a magic bullet among chemical derivatives of the dangerously-toxic drug atoxyl. This was the first organized team effort to optimize the biological activity of a lead compound through systematic chemical modifications, the basis for nearly all modern pharmaceutical research.
Arsphenamine was marketed under the trade name Salvarsan in 1910. It was also called 606, because it was the 606th compound synthesized for testing. Salvarsan was the first organic anti-syphillitic, and a great improvement over the inorganic mercury compounds that had been used previously. A more soluble (but slightly less effective) arsenical compound, Neosalvarsan, (neoarsphenamine), became available in 1912. These arsenical compounds came with considerable risk of side effects, and they were supplanted as treatments for syphilis in the 1940s by penicillin.
The bacterium that causes syphilis is a spirochete, Treponema pallidum. Arsphenamine is not toxic to spirochetes until it has been converted to an active form by the body, so the discovery of this drug could not have been made without Hata's animal testing. After leaving Erlich's laboratory, Hata continued parallel investigation of the new medicine in Japan.[1]
Posts: 984 | From San Diego | Registered: Nov 2006
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Can a doctor still prescribe this stuff? I would be happy to try it.
-------------------- Lyme flare June, July, August of 2013. Diagnosed September 2014 Lyme, Bartonella, Mycoplasma, Mono Posts: 595 | From Texas Crossroads | Registered: Oct 2014
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
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- Salvarsan is arsenic-based. I would never want to try it. Likely, though, it's not an option.
Then toxicity of both arsenic and the companion for treatment, bismuth, became just too tricky to manage & downright dangerous.
Penicillin worked far better & safer for syphilis and - current day - it can be helpful for lyme, yet still not enough alone.
Syphilis is also much easier to treat than lyme, and much shorter treatment, too. The genetic makeup for syphilis is so much less complex than that for lyme.
In 1910, Paul Ehrlich introduced the arsenic-based drug Salvarsan . . .
. . . As far as the treatment of syphilis was concerned, arsenicals remained the mainstay of treatment of syphilis, later in combination with bismuth, until penicillin became widely available after World War II.
Penicillin then rapidly became accepted as the treatment of choice, although penicillin treatment schedules for syphilis were not standardized until 1960. -
[ 06-30-2015, 08:30 PM: Message edited by: Keebler ]
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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It would be interesting to see if either of these 2 old drugs would have any effect on borrelia.
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before they die....
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