A Disease Treatment Discovery

Abstract

<p>Before 1940 we had no drugs that would specifically kill the bacteria of any disease, and the home remedies did very little good in treating most diseases. By 1940 the first sulfa drug that became available was sulfanilamide, and in my senior year in The College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University I used it in treating infectious diseases in horses. It was used successfully especially in large animals such as horses and cattle. By 1946 I became interested in working out a treatment for swine dysentery that was such a costly disease for swine farmers. About 1936 my father, Clay Orum, had swine dysentery infect his feeder pigs weighing less than a hundred pounds, and like most cases he lost over one-third of the herd, and some of those that did live did not gain weight very well after the outbreak. As a veterinary practitioner I faced the dilemma of not being able to help many farmers that lost such high numbers of hogs from this disease.</p>