Word: gonococci
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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While routinely examining a vaginal swab from a woman infected with gonorrhea, Dr. Ian Phillips of London's St. Thomas's Hospital made an alarming discovery: the swab contained a strain of gonococci, or gonorrhea-causing bacteria, unlike any that Phillips had ever seen before in his laboratory. The bean-shaped bugs not only were totally resistant to penicillin-the medication generally employed against this common and often dangerous venereal disease-but actually seemed to thrive in its presence...
...Gonorrhea now rates as America's most urgent public health problem, and officials have urged routine screening to detect the hundreds of thousands of new cases each year. But detection is often difficult, especially in women. Gonococci, the germs of gonorrhea, flourish and multiply astronomically in human genitalia, but are difficult to preserve for laboratory test cultures. The organisms are sensitive to air and often die by the time a specimen reaches a lab technician. Now Smith Kline and French Laboratories have devised a simple, self-contained test that physicians can perform in their own offices. The doctor takes...