UO professor brings the work of a life-saving doctor to light.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 12/28/2006): Eugene medical writer Thomas Hager has

written a book called "The Demon Under the Microscope." A Dec. 16 story in the City-Region section on Page D1 included an incorrect title for the book.

A self-described science geek, Tom Hager was thumbing through a copy of "Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology" when he came across an entry for a German physician named Gerhard Domagk.

Hager had never heard of Domagk and was surprised to learn that he had won a Nobel Prize in 1939, and was arrested by the Gestapo when he tried to claim the prize.

Domagk discovered sulfa, the first antibiotic, a breakthrough that meant infectious diseases were no longer a death sentence.

Hager, a Eugene science writer and assistant journalism professor at the University of Oregon, tells Domagk's story and how his discovery changed the course of medicine in "The Devil Under the Microscope" (Harmony Books, $24.95).

The book has earned strong reviews from publications ranging from Kirkus Reviews and The Wall Street Journal to Entertainment Weekly.

Before Domagk discovered sulfa in 1932, doctors were resigned to the fact that there was nothing they could do to stop the scourge of infectious disease. Bacterial epidemics swept through cities every winter, killing tens of thousands of people. Strep throat, an ear infection, even a small cut could be fatal; President Coolidge's teenage son died after a blister on his foot from playing tennis became infected.

"If you got any kind of bacterial disease, all a doctor could do was hold your hand and hope you got better," Hager said.

Skeptical of the unproven, ineffective patent medicines then in wide use, doctors "were soured on the idea of using heavy duty medicines at all," Hager said.

There was a term for it: therapeutic nihilism. Hager said the philosophy was: "We've looked and looked for powerful medicines, and nothing can cure infectious disease, so we ought to stop looking and just give tender care."

Domagk had worked in a filthy field hospital in World War I, where he triaged the incoming wounded. Those with the worst injuries were put under straw and given water and comfort.

In the morning, Domagk would check on the wounded, sorting the dead from the not-yet-dead.

That experience gave him his mission in life, Hager said. "He devoted his entire life to curing infectious disease.

Domagk was part of a team at Bayer laboratories that discovered sulfa, a little-known family of drugs with the ability to fight bacterial diseases.

The drug was put to use during World War II, and saved millions of lives, including President Roosevelt's son and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

"It was a tremendously powerful moment in medicine," Hager said.

The discovery of sulfa prompted drug companies to research other antibiotics, and within 10 years, penicillin had surpassed sulfa as a more effective anti-bacterial drug.

Hager also writes about sulfa's dark side.

Sulfa was so effective that doctors and nurses prescribed it for a wide range of ailments, in massive doses. It cured gonorrhea, so soldiers were given sulfa pills before they went on leave.

The overuse of antibiotics has created a growing number of germs that become resistant to drugs, which the World Health Organization has identified as the No. 3 public health problem confronting the world.

Because sulfa is developed from a cheap, simple molecule, it couldn't be patented, so several thousand variations came out in a short period of time, many made by mom-and-pop operations.

One was a Tennessee maker of patent medicines that decided to market a sweet-tasting sulfa liquid for use by children.

But there was a technical problem: Sulfa doesn't dissolve well in water or alcohol, so the company chemist finally found a solvent, diethylene glycol, that worked, and whipped up several hundred gallons of the stuff.

More than 100 children died in 1937 as a result, the largest mass poisoning in U.S. history.

That incident prompted Congress to empower the Food and Drug Administration - then a small agency with little authority - to regulate drugs and ensure they were safe before being sold to the public.

Sulfa also had a connection with the notorious medical experiments carried out in Nazi concentration camps. Doctors would intentionally wound prisoners, infect the wounds and give them sulfa to test its effectiveness, Hager said.

The advent of antibiotics brought about an epic change in human health. Before sulfa, 20th century humans were no better able to fight infections than was prehistoric man, Hager said.

In the 20 years after sulfa was introduced, the death rate from childhood disease declined 90 percent, and the average life span increased 10 percent.

"It's important to remind people what a blessed age we live in," Hager said.

"No one in human history has benefited from these powerful drugs more than we have."