In the treatment of patients with rheumatic fever during the past year in this hospital it has been found that amidopyrine is decidedly superior to other drugs heretofore employed, namely, sodium salicylate, acetylsalicylic acid, the ethyl ester of phenylcinchoninic acid, cinchophen and neocinchophen.1 As an adequate summary of the properties of amidopyrine is not available elsewhere, a brief review of the literature concerning it is presented as a preliminary to an account of the observations presented in this paper on rheumatic fever.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Filehne,2 in 1896 and in 1897, described the synthesis, the properties and a few preliminary therapeutic trials of an antipyretic and analgesic which he arbitrarily named "pyramidon," but which he designated more accurately as 4-di-methyl amino-antipyrine. Antipyrine, a condensation product of methyl-phenyl hydrazine and aceto-acetic ester, was first converted by Stolz,3 in 1893, into amidopyrine, or pyramidon, by substituting a di-methyl