Nowadays, it is customary to treat antibiotics with caution: they supposedly do not so much treat as cripple. Meanwhile, even 30 years ago, such a thing could not even come to mind.. The first antibiotic, penicillin, saved more lives than any other drug..

The history of the discovery of penicillin looks like a medical joke. At the beginning of the 20th century, a certain Alexander Fleming, a bacteriologist, later a professor and Nobel laureate, lived and worked in Scotland.. During the First World War, he, not surprisingly, served as a military doctor.. And there was nothing funny about it, of course.. Then antibiotics did not exist yet and people died from any inflammation.. This infuriated Fleming: how could it be, the operation after the injury was successful, and then gangrene or sepsis begins, and the person still dies! And doctors are powerless... Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945 For what? For the discovery of penicillin and its curative effects in various infectious diseases.

Who: Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey (UK).

What came of it? Penicillin ushered in a new era in medicine - the treatment of diseases with antibiotics.

As soon as the opportunity arose, Fleming began to look for ways to fight wounds and other infections.. Recall that in those years, doctors already had a concept of sterility, examined bacteria under a microscope and guessed that it was the latter, having hit the wound, that led to such fatal consequences..

But then a really funny chain of accidents and coincidences begins..

Sloppy scientist By the 1920s, Fleming had already established himself in scientific circles as a talented and persistent researcher.. At the same time, he, oddly enough, was a terrible slob, and this played a decisive role in his discovery. Then experiments with bacteria were carried out in the simplest bioreactor - the so-called Petri dish.. This is a wide glass cylinder with low walls and the same lid, which was supposed to be sterilized after each experiment.. And one day, a cold Fleming sneezed right into a Petri dish, where he had just placed another culture of Micrococcus lysodeicticus bacteria.. A normal doctor would have thrown everything away and re-sterilized, but Fleming did not.

A few days later, he came across this cup again and found that in some places the bacteria had died.! Apparently - in those where the mucus from his nose got when he sneezed. Accident? Fleming was an educated and talented bacteriologist, so he began to test.

So in 1922, lysozyme was discovered - a natural enzyme in the mucus of humans, animals and, as it turned out later, some plants.. It destroys the walls of bacteria and dissolves them, while being harmless to healthy tissues.. (By the way, dogs, by licking their wounds, just reduce the risk of their inflammation due to the high content of lysozyme in saliva. ) Celebration of mold.

However, lysozyme acts rather slowly on most bacteria.. In addition, he fights not with pathogenic bacteria, but with saprophytes - microorganisms-companions that are always present on a person.. Lysozyme regulates so that they do not become too many and due to this they do not turn into parasites. And Fleming continued the search for a universal "

In 1928, the slovenly professor again distinguished himself. Unlike his colleagues, he threw away the contents of the Petri dishes not when the experiment was over, but only when there were no clean dishes left for the experiment - just like some husbands, in the absence of their wives, wash the dishes when there are no more clean plates.

In August, Fleming went on vacation, leaving all the dirty cups in the laboratory unwashed.. During this time, London got colder, then warmer, and everywhere, where possible, mold and fungus flourished.. Returning to the laboratory, the scientist sadly surveyed the mountain of laboratory glassware, occupied by fancifully overgrown rubbish, and began to slowly restore order. And then in one of the cups with staphylococci, he found a mold that killed these same staphylococci!

By the way, the wonderful mold belonged to a rare species and got into the cup quite by accident.. The doctor brought it on unwashed hands from another lab where mold samples were taken from the homes of asthma patients.. These mushrooms belonged to the genus Penicillium, hence the name "

Tested on myself The first person to experience the effects of penicillin was Fleming's assistant, Stuart Greddock, who suffered from sinusitis.. He was injected into the maxillary cavity with a small amount of mold extract. And after a few hours, his condition improved significantly..

Straight way.

Until the 1940s, Fleming struggled with his discovery: it is not enough to discover, it is necessary to develop a production technology! He's out of luck here.. Penicillin was difficult to isolate and was slow and expensive to produce.. He actually abandoned his offspring, but then his colleagues from Oxford University, the doctor Howard Flory and the chemist Ernst Chain, took over the baton.. In 1939-1941, they finally managed to develop a more or less industrial technology for the production of penicillin.. And in 1941, science triumphed: for the first time in history, a person was saved from death - he became a 15-year-old teenager with blood poisoning!

It should be noted that the scientific victory happened at the right time. Indeed, in September 1939, the Second World War began, which became the leader in the number of human lives claimed.. And there would have been even more if penicillin had not come into play, saving the wounded from gangrene and blood poisoning..

By the way, similar studies were carried out in the USSR. In 1942, penicillin was obtained by the Soviet microbiologist Zinaida Yermolyeva.

In 1952, the production technology was further improved, and the first antibiotic became available in any pharmacy.. It began to be widely used to treat, in particular, pneumonia, gonorrhea and other diseases caused by bacteria..

How it works?

Unlike other antiseptics, penicillin does not harm the human body and animals, but only causes trouble to bacteria.. Penicillin blocks the synthesis of peptidoglycan, which is involved in the construction of new bacterial cell membranes, as a result of which their reproduction stops.. Our cell membranes are arranged in a different way and therefore do not react in any way to the administration of the drug..

Nowadays.

Since then, the fourth generation of antibiotics has been created.. Claims are made against penicillin: they say that the bacteria are used to it and it is no longer effective, but it violates the intestinal microflora. Is this true and what is the real place of penicillin in the modern world?

• Pathogenic bacteria really learned to defend themselves - but only from penicillins of natural origin! Now semi-synthetic drugs are used, with which bacteria have not yet learned how to cope..

•Penicillin is indispensable in surgery, especially in the treatment of acute or chronic purulent infections. Purulent infection of the blood or lymphatic tract is still treated with penicillin injections.. Moreover, chemical antiseptics in the presence of pus lose their properties, but our hero does not..

• Penicillin is exceptionally good for the treatment of purulent diseases of the skin, mucous membranes and blood vessels - for example, furunculosis, erysipelas, pleurisy, pneumonia, meningitis, etc.. Accordingly, it is effective in inflammation of the chest and abdominal organs..

•Penicillin is often the last resort for inflammation that newer antibiotics can't handle..

• Penicillin is more often prescribed in the form of injections, which are much less dangerous for the intestinal microflora than tablets. And in general, the harm of antibiotics for the intestines in everyday perception is greatly exaggerated, after all, there are drugs to restore this very useful microflora. Talking about the "

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