The introduction of anti-bacterial sulphonamide drugs in 1936-7 cut deaths from puerperal fever, a bacterial infection contracted by women during childbirth or miscarriage.
Of the 264 samples analysed, 26 (9.8 percent) had residues of antimicrobial drugs, and 77 percent of the samples that tested positive for traces had at least one sulphonamide.
The term antibiotic originally described only those formulations derived from living organisms but is now also applied to synthetic antimicrobials, such as the sulphonamides, or fluoroquinolones.
Drugs associated with sulfhemoglobinemia include acetanilid, phenacetin, nitrates, trinitrotoluene and sulfur compounds (mainly sulphonamides, sulfasalazine).
For example, when antibacterial sulphonamides became available after 1934, infections could be treated quickly and easily on the spot, and mortality rates plummeted.
