Tag: streptomycin
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The discoverers of aspirin
JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Fig 1. Proc Royal Soc 1763, Salix Edmund Stone Willow bark. Source. In the short period between the years 1946-1950, three highly effective new drugs became available for clinical use in the newly established National Health Service. They were penicillin, streptomycin, and cortisone. Before this there were few…
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Selman Waksman, “father of antibiotics” and conquest of tuberculosis
[Dr. Selman Waksman, half-length portrait, facing left at work in the laboratory] / World Telegram & Sun photo by Roger Higgins. 1953. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Selman Abraham Waksman came to the United States in 1910 and worked for a few years on a farm in New Jersey. Born in a rural…
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Chance in the origins of antibiotics
William Kingston Dublin, Ireland The discovery of antibiotics has been described as the “domestication of microorganisms” and ranks in importance with the domestication of animals as part of settled agriculture about 10,000 years ago. It depends upon antagonism between bacteria, which had been noticed as early as 1874, and Pasteur commented then that if…