Antibiotics

Antibiotics are among the most important discoveries of the twentieth century. The word itself comes from Greek: anti means 'against', and bios means 'life'. So, antibiotics are 'against life' — but specifically against the life of disease-causing organisms. From the human perspective, they are 'pro-life', because they save us from infections.

An antibiotic is a chemical substance produced by some microbes that can either kill or stop the growth of other (disease-causing) microbes. This is a precise definition: antibiotics are natural products of microorganisms, not synthetic drugs.

The discovery of Penicillin

The first antibiotic ever discovered was Penicillin, and it happened entirely by chance. Alexander Fleming was working on Staphylococci bacteria in his laboratory. One day, he noticed that a mould had grown in one of his unwashed culture plates. Around that mould, the Staphylococci bacteria could not grow. Fleming realised that the mould was releasing a chemical that killed the bacteria. He named this chemical Penicillin, after the mould Penicillium notatum.

However, Fleming alone could not turn Penicillin into a usable medicine. The full potential of Penicillin as an effective antibiotic was established much later by Ernest Chain and Howard Florey. They purified it and showed that it could cure bacterial infections in humans. During World War II, Penicillin was used extensively to treat wounded American soldiers, saving countless lives.

In 1945, Fleming, Chain, and Florey were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Other antibiotics and their sources

After Penicillin, many other antibiotics were purified from different microbes.

Impact on human health

Antibiotics have dramatically improved our ability to treat deadly diseases that once killed millions of people worldwide. These include:

• Plague
• Whooping cough (kali khansi)
• Diphtheria (gal ghotu)
• Leprosy (kusht rog) …