When the preceding report was sent to the Harmer Laboratories Company, the firm submitted a reply in which it was stated:
1. That in certain instances patients improved under Mon-Arsone who, previously, had not improved under arsphenamine, and that this should be taken to offset the report of the one hundred cases in which the use of Mon-Arsone had to be abandoned in 11 per cent. of the cases.
2. That the Harmer Laboratories Company has abandoned the claim that Mon-Arsone is therapeutically equal to arsphenamine and that it now furnishes the drug to such men as care to use it simply on the basis of its special and useful characteristics.
The Council heartily endorses the recent warning against the use of untried medicaments which was issued by the U. S. Public Health Service.[145]
Since the Council’s report was prepared a report on the effects of Mon-Arsone on experimental syphilis has been published by Nichols,[146] from the Division of Laboratories, Army Medical School, which concludes:
1. Disodium-ethylarsinate, or mon-arsone, tested on rabbits infected with syphilis shows no spirocheticidal power. The tissues are fatally poisoned as soon as or before the spirochetes are affected.
“2. For its practical use in syphilis there is no such germicidal basis as exists in case of the arsphenamine group.”—(From The Journal A. M. A., June 18, 1921.)