Word: staphylococci
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...story of his discovery is legendary. Back in 1928 Alexander Fleming taught bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, University of London. In his small, old-fashioned laboratory, he grew staphylococci in petri plates (flat glass culture dishes). One day he found that mold had spoiled one of his cultures. Staphylococci grew on only half of the plate. A blue-green mold spotted, but did not cover, the other half. He noticed that the mold had cleared a wide, bacteria-free area between itself and the staphylococci-perhaps had killed them...
...miracle drug to save the world from pneumococcal pneumonia, an infection that then had a mortality rate as high as 85%. But as more and more antibiotics came into use, nature fought back, creating more resistant bacteria. When first used, penicillin was nearly 100% effective against the most prevalent Staphylococci aureus that spread hospital-related infection among patients. Today the drug is far less effective. Both tetracycline and penicillin, once used to cure gonorrhea, now have a failure rate of more than 20% against certain strains. For years a growing body of evidence has suggested that the overuse of antibiotics...
...make it still more absorbent, they soaked it in a preparation of benzethonium, a modern, potent germ killer. Then they tested the sutures in mice, and got 100% protection against infection for at least five days, even when the animals were challenged with a massive injection of pus-forming staphylococci...
...fashioned cloth towels, seven were so saturated with germs that no count could be made. Another 63 averaged 16,527 germs per square centimeter, but even worse than the germs' quantity was their quality. Half the towels were loaded with staphylococci, which cause boils and wound infections. A third of the towels bore colon bacteria, which spread dysentery, typhus and typhoid...
Surprisingly, the doctors found that many hospitals and clinics also use common towels. And some of the hospital bugs were the deadliest of all staphylococci-the strains that are resistant to most forms of penicillin and many other antibiotics. Among the worst places was a maternity ward, where women picked up infections and took them home with their babies...