AbstractsOther

Rapid progress has been made in the last decade in the study of chemotherapy, “a subject concerning the properties and various interactions of drug, parasite and host,” (Mcllwain, 1944). In particular, many bacterial diseases which have so far failed to respond to immunization are now being more effectively treated with drugs which have only recently been recognized. The chemotherapeutic drugs include those prepared synthetically and the naturally occurring antibiotics produced by living organisms. [...] Several important physical factors, such as permeability, oxygen tension and oxidation-reduction potentials have been shown to influence the overall antibacterial effect and must therefore be considered in studying the mode of drug action on bacteria. An attempt has been made in this project to investigate some of the fundamental factors which influence the action of chemotherapeutic drugs on bacteria. The results obtained in vitro would seem to indicate that a more effective chemotherapeutic action could be expected by the utilization of two inhibitory drugs simultaneously, resulting in a potentiated or synergistic action which cannot be accounted for by the arithmetic sum of the drug action per se. Accordingly, this latter aspect of synergism between antibacterial substances has also been studied.