Antibiotics

Antibiotics are chemicals made by some microbes that kill or slow the growth of other, disease-causing microbes. They count among the major discoveries of the twentieth century.

The word comes from Greek: 'anti' (against) and 'bio' (life). They act against the life of pathogens, but for human beings they are 'pro life'.

Penicillin was the first antibiotic discovered, and its discovery was a chance one.

Alexander Fleming, working on Staphylococci bacteria, saw a mould growing on an unwashed culture plate; around the mould, Staphylococci failed to grow.

He traced this to a chemical made by the mould and named it Penicillin, after the mould Penicillium notatum.

Ernest Chain and Howard Florey later established its full value as an antibiotic. It was used widely to treat American soldiers wounded in World War II.

Fleming, Chain and Florey shared the Nobel Prize in 1945 for this discovery.

Many more antibiotics were later purified from other microbes. They transformed our ability to treat killer diseases: leprosy (kusht rog), plague, diphtheria (gal ghotu) and whooping cough (kali khansi).