<P> Sulfonamide drugs were the first antibiotics to be used systemically, and paved the way for the antibiotic revolution in medicine . The first sulfonamide, trade - named Prontosil, was a prodrug . Experiments with Prontosil began in 1932 in the laboratories of Bayer AG, at that time a component of the huge German chemical trust IG Farben . The Bayer team believed that coal - tar dyes which are able to bind preferentially to bacteria and parasites might be used to attack harmful organisms in the body . After years of fruitless trial - and - error work on hundreds of dyes, a team led by physician / researcher Gerhard Domagk (working under the general direction of Farben executive Heinrich Hörlein) finally found one that worked: a red dye synthesized by Bayer chemist Josef Klarer that had remarkable effects on stopping some bacterial infections in mice . The first official communication about the breakthrough discovery was not published until 1935, more than two years after the drug was patented by Klarer and his research partner Fritz Mietzsch . </P> <P> Prontosil, as Bayer named the new drug, was the first medicine ever discovered that could effectively treat a range of bacterial infections inside the body . It had a strong protective action against infections caused by streptococci, including blood infections, childbed fever, and erysipelas, and a lesser effect on infections caused by other cocci . However, it had no effect at all in the test tube, exerting its antibacterial action only in live animals . Later, it was discovered by Bovet, Federico Nitti and J. and Th . Jacques Tréfouël, a French research team led by Ernest Fourneau at the Pasteur Institute, that the drug was metabolized into two pieces inside the body, releasing from the inactive dye portion a smaller, colorless, active compound called sulfanilamide . The discovery helped establish the concept of "bioactivation" and dashed the German corporation's dreams of enormous profit; the active molecule sulfanilamide (or sulfa) had first been synthesized in 1906 and was widely used in the dye - making industry; its patent had since expired and the drug was available to anyone . </P> <P> The result was a sulfa craze . For several years in the late 1930s, hundreds of manufacturers produced tens of thousands of tons of myriad forms of sulfa . This and nonexistent testing requirements led to the elixir sulfanilamide disaster in the fall of 1937, during which at least 100 people were poisoned with diethylene glycol . This led to the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1938 in the United States . As the first and only effective antibiotic available in the years before penicillin, sulfa drugs continued to thrive through the early years of World War II . They are credited with saving the lives of tens of thousands of patients, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. (son of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Winston Churchill . Sulfa had a central role in preventing wound infections during the war . American soldiers were issued a first - aid kit containing sulfa pills and powder, and were told to sprinkle it on any open wound . </P> <P> The sulfanilamide compound is more active in the protonated form . The drug has very low solubility and sometimes can crystallize in the kidneys, due to its first pK of around 10 . This is a very painful experience, so patients are told to take the medication with copious amounts of water . Newer analogous compounds prevent this complication because they have a lower pK, around 5--6, making them more likely to remain in a soluble form . </P>

What is the white powder they put on wounds in ww2
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