Walter Ledermann

Ceftriaxone in the Treatment of Bacterial Meningitis in Children

A total of 24 pediatric patients with a diagnosis of meningitis, confirmed by positive CFS culture, were enrolled in the study. All patients received ceftriaxone in different doses. No difference in clinical outcome was found between the patients who received ceftriaxone twice a day and the 11 who received the drug as a single daily dose. The latter dosage proves to be preferable. The therapeutic outcome in this series of patients was 22 cured and 2 failures. Bacteriological and pharmacokinetic findings are discussed.

El camino del caucho

Investigations first by Markham, and then by Spruce, performed in the middle of multiple risks, in the deep of dense jungle, through the wild rivers and facing up natives many times hostile, brought the knowledge of the life cycle of Hevea brasiliensis, the rubber’s tree, necessary for take its seeds to Asia, its adaptation to this continent and its culture at industrial level. Undoubtedly these men were the heroes of this history, but they were wise, modest and quite people, so the glory was for an entrepreneur decided and of scare scruples, like Wickham. And Brazil, as a good Latin American nation, sinned of naivety, improvidence and negligence, allowing itself the lost of an unimaginable fortune: the monopoly of the rubber. Because the many applications of rubber in medical practice, the history of this tree may interest our colleagues.Investigations first by Markham, and then by Spruce, performed in the middle of multiple risks, in the deep of dense jungle, through the wild rivers and facing up natives many times hostile, brought the knowledge of the life cycle of Hevea brasiliensis, the rubbers tree, necessary for take its seeds to Asia, its adaptation to this continent and its culture at industrial level. Undoubtedly these men were the heroes of this history, but they were wise, modest and quite people, so the glory was for an entrepreneur decided and of scare scruples, like Wickham. And Brazil, as a good Latin American nation, sinned of naivety, improvidence and negligence, allowing itself the lost of an unimaginable fortune: the monopoly of the rubber. Because the many applications of rubber in medical practice, the history of this tree may interest our colleagues.

Historia sucinta de Candida albicans, blanca pero no tanto

From the begin of clinical microbiology in the second half of the nineteenth century, the fungi were neglected as contaminants without relevance for health, belonging the major advances of their study to the fields of milk derivatives and beer industries. However, the seek for the etiological agent of thrush, a very common oral pathology affecting the newborn, put the yeasts on the table near 1840 with three capital papers Berg, Gruby and Bennett speaking about spores from vegetable as parasites of animal and human beings. The door was open, and very soon, in 1853, came the decisive description by Robin of the Oidium albicans as the causative agent of this painful disease. Seventy years after, in 1923, Christine Marie Berkhout, rejecting this name, defined the genus as Candida, leaving the specie with the iterative Latin name of Candida albicans, that means “White-white”. Or, perhaps, with a fine sense of humor, she has made an oxymoron, because “candida” means a brilliant white and “albicans” a matt one, both opposite adjectives. Or, may be, Christine is still saying us: “White...but not so white”.

A tribute to the gender: Devoted wives of intrepid investigators

Starting from the unfortunate words of Nobel Prize Tim Hunt about the presence of women in laboratories, we remember the stories of some devoted wives of intrepid investigators. Surely, more of someone, like Fanny Eilshemius or Mary Elizabeth Steele, never received the merited acknowledgement, working side by side with her husband in the house and in the lab; in a better stage, another one investigated as well as him, in the same or in a different field, like Mary Ethel Hayter Reed or Rebecca Craighill; and, finally and undoubtedly, most of them, being only simple housekeepers, like Emilie de La Salle, Win Warren or Adrienne Marshall, gave moral and kindly support to their men or... making an awful exception, betrayed these bored genius running away with an artist, with or without justification.

[From pirates to virus: the Oropesa's journey].

In 1902, being Chile a country free of yellow fever, the British steamship Oropesa arrived from Rio de Janeiro with three passengers suffering this disease. Captain Hayes rejected the quarantine imposed by the local Junta of Sanity in Punta Arenas and also in Coronel, following his journey with the sick passengers to Valparaiso, port where he accepted a brief quarantine and medical services for the most compromised of the three patients, who unfortunately died. The knowledge about yellow fever and the applicable epidemiological measures in that time in Chile come to us through the sessions of the Superior Council of Public Hygiene. The threat that implicated the presence of the Oropesa in Chilean coasts is compared with the arrival of British pirates and corsairs in the colonial centuries, before the independence, announced with the alarm cry charque (for Sharp) is coming to Coquimbo!

Del Wassermann al VDRL en el antiguo Instituto Bacteriológico de Chile

El autor recuerda, a veces en una muy personal y coloquial forma, la adopcion por el Instituto Bacteriologico de las tres reacciones para el diagnostico presuntivo de la sifilis que empleaban antigenos no treponemicos: Wassermann, Kahn y VDRL. Las seneras figuras de algunos de los gestores de estos cambios, como Rudolf Kraus, Eduardo Dusssert y Reuben Kahn son recreadas con las palabras de testigos de primera mano.