A simple, sensitive and selective method for the spectrophotometric determination of drugs, viz., sulphamethoxazole, tetracycline HCl, amidopyrine, nifurtimox and isoniazid and biologically important amino acids, cysteine, aspartic acid and arginine based on their reactivity with chloramine-T (CAT) is proposed. The method involves the addition of excess CAT of a known concentration in the presence of 0.25 M HCl and the determination of the unreacted CAT by measurement of the decrease in the absorbance of the dye, gallocyanine (lambda(max): 540 nm), the most suitable of several dyes that were tested. This method was applied to the determination of drug contents in pharmaceutical formulations and to the measurement of the aspartic acid content of some protein hydrolysates. The method is useful for the determination of the target compounds in microgram quantities from 0.4-5.6 microg mL(-1) with the exceptions of arginine (1.0-8.0 microg mL(-1)) and nifurtimox (0.8-5.6 microg mL(-1)). Standard deviations were typically 0.5 mg per dose (RSD 0.5-1.2%). No interferences were observed from common excipients in formulations, and detailed interference studies of other amino acids in the determination of cysteine, aspartic acid and arginine are reported. The validity of the method was tested against spectrophotometric and titrimetric reference methods. Recoveries were 99.8-102.1%.