ABSTRACT
When, at the end of 1962, the physicians at the Pakistan-Southeast Asia Treaty Organization Cholera Research Laboratory and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Medical Research and Training (JHCMRT) first began to turn their attention to the treatment of cholera patients, they were equally inexperienced in dealing with the disease. Obviously, antibiotics were considered, and the cholera vibrio was found to be sensitive to them in laboratory tests, but in the clinical treatment of the disease they had been found wanting. Laboratory tests of blood specific gravity as a measure of degree of dehydration of a patient, and therefore of the volume of replacement fluid he would need, suited Phillips very well. Cases of El Tor (Ogawa strain) cholera were studied at JHCMRT during their third year, in the spring of 1964, at the same time as they were carrying out their studies on the evaluation of tetracycline.
