Dr. Leondro Tomarkin, a young Jewish bacteriologist formerly of Switzerland, has been called to attend the Duke of Aosta, a relative of King Victor Emanuel, who is dangerously ill at Turin.
Dr. Tomarkin is the reputed discoverer of a remarkable cure for pneumonia, consisting of a chemical therapic preparation.
The efficacy of Dr. Tomarkin’s cure was recently disclosed in London when Dr. Ugo Antona-Traversi, Secretary of the Italian hospital there, told how the young physician same near to treating Pope Benedict XV when the Pontiff lay dying.
“A young swiss scientist presented himself at the Vatican”, Dr. Antona-Traversi said, “and asked to see the doctors who were treating the Pontiff. He was admitted, and saying he understood that the Pope was suffering from pneumonia, declared that he possessed a remedy which would cure him. The young scientist was Dr. Leondro Tomarkin. The Pope’s medical advisers felt themselves unable to try this unknown specific upon so illustrious a patient, but after the Pope’s death Professor Marchiasava, one of the doctors, got in touch with young Tomarkin and invited him to the Hospital S. Spirito (Hospital of the Holy Ghost), Rome, of which he is the head. There, after some conversation with him, he gave him permission to continue his experiment with results that have been remarkably encouraging. In May last, twenty-five patients were treated for bronchial pneumonia, and twenty-four out of the twenty-five recovered. The patient who died suffered from serious complications, and was only admitted to the hospital when in a very advanced stage. Before that it was generally considered that mortality from bronchial pneumonia in Rome was about forty per cent of the cases.
“Dr. Tomarkin’s discovery is a chemical therapic preparation. It can be best described as a grey powder easily soluable in cold water, but not so easily in alchohol, and it is not soluable at all in sulphuric ether. It acts upon the blood, it being claimed for it that it causes the production of the pneumonia germ to cease and kills those germs which are already in the system. It then produces defensive germs in order to strengthen the patient in his battle against the disease”.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
