While:
“... eminent chemists have confessed themselves unable to understand his chemistry.”
The authors explain:
“Recognizing that this might prejudice our practical tests of Intramine and Ferrivine, we have taken particular care to guard against their influence, cross-checking our observations and submitting them to others for confirmation or otherwise.”
Harrison and Mills chose for a test three ordinary cases of secondary syphilis, cases with well marked lesions, the clinical progress of which could easily be watched and from which it was easy to obtain specimens for microscopic examination. After a detailed account of the three cases—which records grave conditions resulting from the treatment and which shows the inefficiency of the drugs—they write:
“From the above account it will be seen that the local and general reactions which follow the injection of these preparations are by no means pleasant. In the case of Intramine the pain is undiluted torture and lasts so for two or three days. One of us had previously treated four cases with Intramine and the same local reaction occurred in these. In two of them abscesses have burst outwardly, one of which is still discharging necrotic débris, ten weeks after the injection, and will take many more weeks to close. In those cases where no abscess has yet burst it is easy to feel by the gap in the muscles that considerable necrosis has occurred. None of these effects can be ascribed to sepsis, as most rigid aseptic precautions were taken. Further, particular care was taken to make the injections strictly intramuscular. The constitutional symptoms which follow immediately upon the injection of Ferrivine are distinctly alarming, and such as would cause one to hesitate before injecting this remedy into any but robust patients.”
Harrison and Mills estimate the therapeutic effects of these drugs thus:
“1. That Ferrivine entirely failed to cause S. pallida to disappear from the lesions of three well-marked cases of secondary syphilis.
“2. After the failure of Ferrivine to cause the disappearance of Spirochaeta pallida from a mucous patch a single dose of 0.3 gm. salvarsan effected this in 18 hours, and the patch, which had hitherto been uninfluenced, had healed within 48 hours.
“3. Clinically we were unable to detect any influence of either or both these compounds on syphilitic lesions, although each of them was of the variety which heals in a week or ten days under salvarsan treatment.