Antibiotics

Antibiotics are an important class of anti-microbi-als used to kill or slow the growth of bacteria. They are specific in nature and their mode of action and therefore do not have any effect against viruses, fungi, or parasites. Fortunately, they are harmless for the host and can be used effectively to manage and treat bacterial infections. Since their accidental discovery in 1929, antibiotics have played a large role in reducing morbidity and mortality of bacterial infections around the world.

Antibiotics are considered one of the few successful developments of a “magic bullet” capable of effectively treating a patient with minimal harm to the individual. Although the future effectiveness of antibiotics is in question because of the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, antibiotics will always be among the most dramatic achievements of modern medicine. Many infectious diseases once considered incurable can now be treated with several pills.

The discovery of antibiotics is sometimes said to have happened twice. The earliest discovery was made in 1896 by a French medical student, Ernest Duchesne. As a student, Duchesne found the antibiotic properties of Penicillium but did not make the key connection between the fungus and the substance containing the antibacterial properties. In 1928 Alexander Fleming, a British scientist, discovered the agent that came to be known as penicillin, and he often receives the credit for the discovery of antibiotics.

Fleming's discovery, although important enough to change the course of medicine and the future of mankind, was an accident. The story is that Fleming had returned from a weekend vacation and proceeded to look through sets of old plates that had been left out in the lab. He found that colonies of Staphylococcus bacteria that were streaked out to grow on the plate had lysed. Fleming noted that the bacterial lysis occurred in areas next to contaminated mold that was [Page 146]also growing on the plate. He consequently made the connection that the mold was producing an agent capable of causing bacterial cell destruction. The substance found to diffuse across the agar plate from the mold to the bacteria was named penicillin after Penicillium, the mold that produced it.

Although Fleming made the discovery of penicillin, the use of the substance in a clinical setting to treat patients was not yet possible. Fleming lacked the ability to purify the large quantities of penicillin needed for a treatment dose. Consequently, he was unable to test the agent's efficacy in an animal or human host. His work with the substance ended in 1931 with his last published work on penicillin.

Almost 10 years later, in 1939, a trio of scientists demonstrated penicillin's true power in the clinical setting. Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and Norman Heatley took animals and humans suffering from bacterial infections and in dire condition and cured them with only modest amounts of the drug. Medicine would never be the same. In the early 1940s during the peak of World War II, England and the United States collaborated to increase the production of penicillin. At the time, England had fully committed itself to war in Europe and lacked the capacity to develop penicillin for the masses. To this day, this international cooperation remains a successful example of group collaboration and research in medicine.

...