Because such measures as renal pelvic lavage cannot be employed in young children with the same facility as in adults, a more efficient internal urinary antiseptic, which could be administered by mouth without danger, would seem to be a particularly welcome addition to our present methods of treating the urinary infections of infancy and childhood. It was with great interest, therefore, that we undertook the clinical application of hexylresorcinol in this group of cases.
As has been pointed out,1 hexylresorcinol2 is the substance described as meeting all of the experimental qualifications enumerated by Davis and his co-workers3 as essential to an internal urinary antiseptic. The experimental facts, on which its clinical employment is based, are as follows:
It is a stable chemical compound.
It is nontoxic in therapeutic doses.
It is nonirritating to the urinary tract.
It is bactericidal in high dilution in urine of any reaction.