Word: penicillins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Waksman from the ax. Within two years Selman Waksman's "playing around with microbes" had paid off with one of the biggest jackpots that has ever gushed from a scientist's laboratory. Dr. Waksman (rhymes with boxman) had become the discoverer of streptomycin, which ranks next to penicillin among the antibiotics and is the first of these "wonder drugs" to show hopeful results in the treatment of tuberculosis...
...discovery of penicillin (almost by accident) in 1928 was a conspicuous breakthrough. Britain's Dr. Alexander Fleming noticed that the mold Penicillium notatum secretes a substance that kills certain bacteria growing on culture dishes. Later it was found that the secretion also kills many disease-producing organisms in the human body. It also does its job without any appreciable damage to human tissues. Fleming's great discovery focused attention on the fact that some micro-organisms are powerful chemical weapons that can be used against other disease-causing microorganisms...
...spite of such failings, gramicidin touched off a chain reaction. Dubos announced its discovery in 1939. A group of British researchers heard about it and recalled Alexander Fleming's Penicillium notatum. The substance it secreted is penicillin. Ripples of excitement spread through the world's biological laboratories...
...damage. But it has already been used with success as a last desperate measure. Just before Labor Day, a fat but unhappy farmer was admitted to Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. He had a deep-seated infection caused by a common microbe, Aerobacter aerogenes, which is usually a pushover for penicillin or streptomycin...
...farmer's germs were a special strain. They had licked their weight in penicillin, and come back to knock out streptomycin, chloramphenicol and aureomycin. Unchecked, they were a sure bet to kill the farmer. Dr. Garfield G. Duncan pitted the tough germs in a test tube against neomycin. The drug murdered them...