Medicine: From a Japanese Garden

• Share

When Dr. Tadakatsu Tazaki, fired with ambition to find new antibiotics, visited Nagoya University (230 miles west of Tokyo) in 1952, one of the first things he did was to spoon up a sample of soil from the medical-compound garden. Hopefully, he labeled it K-2J, sent it to his ex-chief, Microbiologist Hamao Umezawa, at Tokyo University. There it became one of the 1,200 soil samples tested every year to see whether they harbor microbes capable of producing substances to kill other microbes.

Last week the payoff was reported at a two-day Manhattan medical meeting: kanamycin, an antibiotic developed from a microbe found in K-2J, has won quick renown. Like all potent drugs, it has its disadvantages (it must usually be given by injection, and long-continued heavy dosage may cause some degree of deafness). But it seems worthy to rank with the tetracyclines, which, after penicillin (still queen of antibiotics), are now the most-used antibiotics.

Especially valuable is kanamycin's effectiveness against strains of microbes, notably Staphylococcus aureus, that are resistant to the older antibiotics and have caused terrifying epidemics in many U.S. hospitals. Kanamycin got its acid test in such an outbreak in Houston (TIME, March 31): of 36 infants who got it, 28 recovered, including eleven who had been considered hopeless cases.

Research physicians from a dozen U.S. medical centers reporting on their studies with more than 500 patients expressed hope that kanamycin will also prove effective against many urinary-tract infections (common, stubborn and dangerous), and against tuberculosis—though precise assay of its usefulness against TB will take years. Also offered was evidence that kanamycin (released for general prescription last month, trade-named Kantrex by Bristol Laboratories) may prolong life and ease pain in cirrhosis of the liver.