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Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and Robert. I know you want to talk

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Speaker 1: about D and D before we get to the real subject. Well,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I was thinking about doing it last.

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Speaker 1: We can go ahead and talk about it up front. Um. Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: in Dungeons and Dragons, Uh, you have all these various

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Speaker 1: demon lords. Uh and uh, they they rule over various

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Speaker 1: sort of portions of the of of the fiend population

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Speaker 1: in the game. And there are two demon lords in

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Speaker 1: particular that I was thinking about in regards to today's episode. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and that that would be zug Boy and jubile X.

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Speaker 1: So zug Boy is the the demon Lord of fun Guy,

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Speaker 1: the Queen of fun Guy, the master of Decay, and

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Speaker 1: then opposing her, Um Everett odds with her is jubile X,

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Speaker 1: the Faceless Lord, which is a god of uzas and

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Speaker 1: slimes and blobs, you know, all the the using nasty

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Speaker 1: creatures of Dungeons and Dragons. And yeah, they're they oppose

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Speaker 1: each other. They're constant war with each other and in

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Speaker 1: some campaigns like their forces and even there they're you know,

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Speaker 1: embodied forms do battle with one another, and it actually

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Speaker 1: ties in a bit with the subject we're talking about

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Speaker 1: today of penicillin. Okay, so penicillin the fungus that fights

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Speaker 1: I don't know, would you call diseases slimes? Well, I

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Speaker 1: feel like jubile X being the demon lord of uzes

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Speaker 1: and slimes kind of makes it the demon lord of

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Speaker 1: of microbiology as well, and you know, microves and uh

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Speaker 1: and microbial illnesses. So okay, Well, so today we're going

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Speaker 1: to be talking about penicillin. I guess maybe one of

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Speaker 1: the great real weapons of zug Tamoi. But this this

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Speaker 1: came up, I think because we've been talking about fungus

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Speaker 1: on our other podcasts on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: where we just finished recording a five part series on psychedelics.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, looking at fungal psychedelics and ongoing research into

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Speaker 1: how these substances could enhance our mental well being and

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Speaker 1: helping the treatment of the psychological issues. And one of

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Speaker 1: our big take homes was that these fungi could help

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Speaker 1: save lives and improve the quality of human life. But

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Speaker 1: it would not be the first or only fung gui

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Speaker 1: to do so, because we can certainly look to various

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Speaker 1: interactions between human hell the different fungi species and their use,

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Speaker 1: and traditional medicine. We can point to various products including

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Speaker 1: you know, products of fermentation, for instance, including alcohol. But

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Speaker 1: there's an even better example of better living through fungi,

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Speaker 1: and that's penicillin. Right, So today we're going to briefly

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Speaker 1: explore the invention of penicillin, which is often cited as

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Speaker 1: the first true antibiotic technology. Of course, antibiotics or medications

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Speaker 1: that treat infections by killing, injuring, or slowing the growth

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Speaker 1: of bacteria in the body, and antibiotics are a class

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Speaker 1: of what you would generally call antimicrobial drugs, medicines that

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Speaker 1: kill microbes that present a threat to the body. Of course,

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Speaker 1: an antibiotics generally fight bacterial infections, whereas you could have

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Speaker 1: others like anti fungals that fight fungal infections or anti

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Speaker 1: virals that fight viral infections. Now, antimicrobials and antibiotics are

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Speaker 1: a gigantic subject area that we're of course not going

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Speaker 1: to be able to get into every nook and cranny

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Speaker 1: of the subject, but we hope we could have an

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Speaker 1: interesting introductory introductory discussion, maybe come back to antibiotics sometime

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Speaker 1: again in the future, because it's a it's a broad

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Speaker 1: invention that has lots of little invention tributaries throughout history. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it is such a fascinating case to look at,

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Speaker 1: and I think should make for a great episode of

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Speaker 1: invention here because for starters, it's it's a twentieth century

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Speaker 1: invention slash discovery. Often, of course, the line between invision

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Speaker 1: and discovery is a little bit gray, but we can, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we can pinpoint it and ultimately like rolled out by

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Speaker 1: or so, but that we can, we can look to it.

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Speaker 1: We can look at the world before, and we can

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Speaker 1: look at the world after with it with the sort

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Speaker 1: of clarity that we don't always have with certainly older

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Speaker 1: or more ancient inventions. Exactly because we always like to

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Speaker 1: ask the question on this show, what came before the invention?

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Speaker 1: What what changed when this invention came on the scene. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And what came before widespread modern antibiotics was stupendous amounts

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Speaker 1: of death and misery from infectious disease in blood poisoning.

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Speaker 1: I was wondering, like, is it even possible to to

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Speaker 1: get stats on what the world of infectious disease looked

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Speaker 1: like before we had antibiotics around the mid twentieth century. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, to a certain extent, a lot of the

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Speaker 1: suffering is just incalculable, um, you know, especially if you

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Speaker 1: go back and sort of consider all of human history

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Speaker 1: up to that point and the various factors that that

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Speaker 1: influenced infectious disease and injury, you know, the eventually the

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Speaker 1: rise of germ theory, but also the things like they

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Speaker 1: the rise of cities and so forth. But but LUCKI yea,

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Speaker 1: since it was such a recent invention, we have some

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Speaker 1: pretty incredible stats on the matter. Um, you know, suddenly

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Speaker 1: thinks to this new miracle drug, diseases that had simply

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Speaker 1: ravaged the global population, like syphilis, could be cured. The

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Speaker 1: shadow of lethal infection no longer hung, at least as

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Speaker 1: heavily over every scrape, injury and war wound and with

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Speaker 1: wounds were often talking about sepsis, which is a term

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Speaker 1: that was used by Hippocrates back in the fourth century

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Speaker 1: b c. Meaning blood rod or blood poisoning, and he

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Speaker 1: was referring more generally, I think, to decay, but the

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Speaker 1: term came to be applied to blood poisoning, which arises

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Speaker 1: when the body's response to infection causes causes injury to

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Speaker 1: its own tissue and organs. But just prior to the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, infectious diseases accounted for high morbidity and mortality

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Speaker 1: rates around the world, even in the industrialized world. According

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Speaker 1: to W. A. Adgy in the Treasure called Antibiotics, from

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Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, the average life expectancy at birth was

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Speaker 1: forty seven years, forty six and forty eight years from

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Speaker 1: men and women, respectively, and this was due to the

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Speaker 1: dangers of smallpox, uh cholera, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid fever, plague, tuberculosis, typhus, syphilis,

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Speaker 1: and a host of other ailments that could afflict you.

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Speaker 1: And then during the antibiotic era that follow again you know,

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Speaker 1: arising in the middle of the twenty century, the leading

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Speaker 1: cause of death in the United States changed from communicable

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Speaker 1: diseases to non communicable diseases like cardio cardiovascular disease, cancer,

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Speaker 1: and stroke, and the average life ex expectancy at birth

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Speaker 1: rose to seventy eight point eight years, so the elderly

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Speaker 1: were no longer a mere four percent of the population,

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Speaker 1: but grow to become a whopping percent of the population.

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Speaker 1: So you know, we're talking about you know, profound changes

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Speaker 1: just to demographics based on this new uh, this new invention. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the change is huge. I mean, we live in a

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Speaker 1: world now where if you have access to high quality

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Speaker 1: modern medicine, and a lot of people don't, I mean

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Speaker 1: that's something mind. But if you have access to high quality,

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Speaker 1: modern science based medicine and you can get antibiotics and uh,

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Speaker 1: and you can get to a hospital or see a doctor,

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Speaker 1: you very likely have a good chance to beat most

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Speaker 1: of the common infectious diseases that people get unless you

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Speaker 1: have some kind of you know, like another condition that

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Speaker 1: exacerbates it or something. Before antibiotics, this was just not

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Speaker 1: that people just died from diseases that you catch, like

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Speaker 1: diseases that are common for people to catch all the time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Or you had certain diseases like syphilis that were virtually uncurable,

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Speaker 1: you know, and and some of the the cures that

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Speaker 1: were attempted were pretty horrendous, you know, and and and

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Speaker 1: had and and generally did not work, you know, talking

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Speaker 1: about like using mercury and so forth. And you mentioned

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Speaker 1: before contamination of wounds. I mean, this is just a

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Speaker 1: huge thing, just like you know, you might, uh, you

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Speaker 1: might cut yourself while gardening and you die from it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and Heaven forbid you undergo say medieval gall stone surgery

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Speaker 1: or something like that. By the way, I think tuberculosis

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Speaker 1: has a you know, is a good example to look

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Speaker 1: at for some of these stats as well. According to

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Speaker 1: the c d C, t B was a leading cause

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Speaker 1: of death in the US in nineteen forty prior to

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Speaker 1: the rollout of antibiotic therapy in nineteen hundred, a hundred

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Speaker 1: and ninety four of every hundred thousand US residents died

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Speaker 1: from the t B. Uh. Most were residents of urban areas.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen hundred, the three leading causes of death in

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Speaker 1: the US word pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhea and uh enteritis,

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Speaker 1: which together with diphtheria, caused one third of all deaths,

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Speaker 1: and of these deaths, forty percent were among children aged

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Speaker 1: less than five years old. Now, to your point, and

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Speaker 1: not everybody has the access to antibiotics that say people

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Speaker 1: enjoy and say Europe in the United States, Um, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: T remains a leading cause of death from an infectious

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Speaker 1: disease in many parts of the world, particularly the developing world,

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Speaker 1: and some antibiotic treatments or antibiotic assisted treatments are more

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Speaker 1: complicated and more difficult than others. I mean, I know

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Speaker 1: the treatment for TB is not as say, easy as

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Speaker 1: the round of just orally administered antibiotics that you might

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Speaker 1: get for a standard bacterial infection. Right but it's suddenly

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Speaker 1: it was just a heralded rightfully so is as a

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Speaker 1: miracle invention. When it came about you, I saw an

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Speaker 1: image of of a sign I think a garbage can

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Speaker 1: ra a mailbox from the mid twentieth century, advertising that

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Speaker 1: now you can get gonna recured in in uh like

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Speaker 1: four hours thanks to the you know, these new developments

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Speaker 1: in antibiotics. You know, it's just a it can be

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Speaker 1: difficult to put ourselves in that mindset, having grown up

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Speaker 1: in the wake of antihiblotics, or at least most of us,

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Speaker 1: most people listening to this show. I was just thinking

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Speaker 1: about how many like US presidents died of infections of

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Speaker 1: various kinds. Uh that that that seems like that would

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Speaker 1: be a very unusual thing to happen now, But like

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, James Garfield got shot, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't the initial gun shot that killed him. He lived

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Speaker 1: for like, I think weeks afterwards, he got an infection

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Speaker 1: in the wound, I think because they were digging around

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Speaker 1: with dirty hands to try to get the bullet out

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Speaker 1: of him, and he and they didn't have antibiotics of

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Speaker 1: course when he got an infection, so he died. I

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Speaker 1: think another U s p. It was at William Henry Harrison,

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Speaker 1: who I think they think now died from probably like

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Speaker 1: drinking fecal contaminated water in the White House. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: many different U UH injuries and infections were just far

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Speaker 1: more likely to be lethal with you know, without modern

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Speaker 1: antibiotics to step in and UH and EID in the fight. Now,

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Speaker 1: there were some things that were kind of like versions

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Speaker 1: of antibiotics or antimicrobials from before the discovery of penicillin

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Speaker 1: in nine Yeah, the best example from the period just

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Speaker 1: immediate immediately prior to pnicillin would be the sulfonamides or

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Speaker 1: the sulfa drugs. And these were the first antibacterials to

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Speaker 1: be used systematically, and they were synthesized in nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: two in the German laboratories of bear A g. Now

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Speaker 1: you might be thinking about the timeline, Like, wait a minute,

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Speaker 1: didn't we just say that penicillin was discovered in twenty eight,

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Speaker 1: But it took a long time after the discovery of

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Speaker 1: penicillin's uh antibacterial properties for it to be made as

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Speaker 1: a useful medical tribe Like it was ninety generally that's

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Speaker 1: the day you see for when penicillin actually became an

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Speaker 1: actionable thing in medicine. Uh So, yeah, before that, we

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Speaker 1: had the sulfa drugs and it had they had a

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Speaker 1: rocky start, but they did prove very effective in preventing

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Speaker 1: wound infections during the Second World War. They were used

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Speaker 1: on both sides in the in the form of sulfa

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Speaker 1: pills and also sulfa powders that would be sprinkled over

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Speaker 1: a wound. So if you've ever watched you know, uh,

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Speaker 1: some sort of period piece, so especially a war piece

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Speaker 1: from the twentieth century, and you see somebody sprinkling outer

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Speaker 1: over an injury, that is what that's supposed to be.

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Speaker 1: Sulfa drugs. They're not as effective as true antibiotics like

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Speaker 1: penicillin um and there are a number of possible side

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Speaker 1: effects that one that can take place, and it also

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Speaker 1: can't be used to treat syphilis, and it also can't

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Speaker 1: treat sulfa resistant infections. Now, of course, this is also

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Speaker 1: a twentieth century invention, So I was wondering, did anybody

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Speaker 1: come up with any version of antibiotics or proto antibiotics

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Speaker 1: before the twentieth century. We know that penicillin hadn't been

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Speaker 1: discovered and isolated and made stable as a useful medicine,

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Speaker 1: But were there any thing's like antibiotics or sort of

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Speaker 1: precursors of antibiotics. Well, because in Game of Thrones, right,

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Speaker 1: they have penicillin, don't they? Or they have some sort

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Speaker 1: of fantasy version of penicillin. I've never heard of that,

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Speaker 1: don't they? They have something that the the the the

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Speaker 1: old masters would mention having to do with with bread

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Speaker 1: and mold or something, didn't they. I don't remember that.

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Speaker 1: I just remember people get cuts and then they get

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Speaker 1: infected and die. Give milk of the poppy. I mean,

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Speaker 1: they have milk of the poppy that our Game of

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Speaker 1: Thrones are are George R. Martin readers will have to

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Speaker 1: write in on that, but I vaguely remember there being

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Speaker 1: like allusion to something like, uh, some sort of mold

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Speaker 1: based uh medicine that they were using. Uh, I could

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Speaker 1: be wrong in it. Well, I can't see that being

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Speaker 1: something that's thrown in there as a little aside, but

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Speaker 1: that like isn't widely recognized or used. Maybe uh. And

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Speaker 1: it's interesting how that kind of parallels some interesting pieces

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Speaker 1: of evidence for proto antibiotic technology in the real world,

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Speaker 1: even going back to ancient times. So I want to

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Speaker 1: look at the work of the Emory University bio archaeologist

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Speaker 1: George J. R. Meligos, who is now deceased. I think

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Speaker 1: he died inteen. But he's interesting, interesting scholar, and he

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Speaker 1: discovered something very curious back in nineteen eighty. So the

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Speaker 1: subject he was looking at was a set of human

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Speaker 1: bones from ancient Nubia, dating from between three fifty and

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Speaker 1: five fifty c E. And so the bones came from Nubia,

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Speaker 1: which is a region of Africa along the Nile River

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Speaker 1: but south of Egypt and what would be modern day Sudan.

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Speaker 1: And what these bones showed was evidence that the people

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Speaker 1: they belonged to had been taking tetracycline. Now, tetracycline is

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Speaker 1: not the same as penicillin, but it is an antibiotic.

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Speaker 1: It can be used to treat all kinds of infections,

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Speaker 1: from minor problems like acne, I think in concert with

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Speaker 1: some other drugs to major diseases like plague or tularemia

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Speaker 1: or even syphilis. And Tetracycline works primarily by binding to

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Speaker 1: the ribosomes of bacterial cells. Ribosomes are sort of the

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Speaker 1: cellular factories. They build proteins that are needed in order

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Speaker 1: for organisms to live and grow, and by binding to

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Speaker 1: the ribosome, tetracycline makes it difficult for the bacterium to

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Speaker 1: create new proteins. It was patented in the nineteen fifties

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Speaker 1: and became widely used in the in half of the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century. Uh so what was it doing in the

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Speaker 1: bones of Nubian people who live like seventeen hundred years ago. Well,

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Speaker 1: our Melagos and colleagues followed archaeological clues to identify the

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Speaker 1: source of the tetracycline, which was beer. Ah. Of course

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Speaker 1: beer is another one of Ultimately it falls under zugdmoise domain.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, though this is different because tetracycline is not

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Speaker 1: made from a fungus. It is actually an antibacterial that

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Speaker 1: is a byproduct of some bacteria. Okay, so it's a

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Speaker 1: bacterial byproduct, but essentially so technically it's jubilex okay, or

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Speaker 1: point to this is jubilex versus jubilex. Right, Well, I

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Speaker 1: mean that's going to happen with your demon inter Jubilan warfare.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, beer is made from fermented grain, of course,

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Speaker 1: and the fermented grain in this ancient Nubian beer apparently

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Speaker 1: contained the bacteria stripped to mices, which creates tetracycline as

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Speaker 1: a byproduct. But a question of course, so were these

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Speaker 1: traces of tetracycling in Nubian mummy bones a sign of

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Speaker 1: like a bad batch of beer they got contaminated by accident,

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Speaker 1: or were these people deliberately culturing their beer with antibiotic

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Speaker 1: producing bacteria and so to look at a study from

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Speaker 1: the American Journal of Physical Anthropology from twenty ten, of

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Speaker 1: which arm Lagos was one of the authors. The authors

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Speaker 1: examine tetracycling in skeletal remains from throughout this period and

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Speaker 1: the evidence indicates that the ancient Nubians were consuming these

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Speaker 1: antibiotics on a regular basis, and the authors suggests that

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Speaker 1: these ancient people were intentionally producing this medicine, and this

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Speaker 1: links up with some evidence from other ancient people's nearby,

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Speaker 1: such as the Egyptians that sometimes apparently used beer as

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Speaker 1: a treatment for conditions like gum disease and other types

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Speaker 1: of infections, and the authors even found evidence of a

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Speaker 1: four year old child whose skull contained lots of tetracycling

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Speaker 1: from this beer, suggesting that the child had been fed

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Speaker 1: high doses of this like antibiotic beer, perhaps in an

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Speaker 1: attempt to cure an illness, maybe the illness that killed him.

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Speaker 1: And so the levels of tetracycline residue found in the

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Speaker 1: bones of these mummies is only explicable if they were

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Speaker 1: repeatedly consuming this antibiotic in their diet, and there are

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Speaker 1: actually other archaeological remains that show evidence of antibiotic use

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Speaker 1: in the ancient world. For example, samples taken from the

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Speaker 1: fhemera of skeletons from the Dochlay Oasis in Egypt, from

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Speaker 1: people who live sometime in the late Roman period also

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Speaker 1: showed evidence of the same thing of tetracycline in the diet,

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Speaker 1: and this consumption of tetracycline is consistent with other evidence

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Speaker 1: showing a relatively low rate of infectious disease in Sudanese

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Speaker 1: Nubia during that time period, and a lack of bone

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Speaker 1: infections apparent in these remains from the this oasis in Egypt.

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Speaker 1: So it really does look like people in ancient Africa

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Speaker 1: discovered a somewhat effective form of antibiotic centuries before the

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Speaker 1: discovery of penicillin and the isolation and mass production of

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Speaker 1: focused anti microbial medicines. Now, to be clear, I think

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Speaker 1: like a beer that had tetracycling content from from being

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Speaker 1: cultured with bacteria like this probably would not be as

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Speaker 1: potent and focused and effective as like the isolated compounds

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Speaker 1: in the drugs you'd take orally or through injection would

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Speaker 1: be today, but it would have some effect, and it

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Speaker 1: appeared that it probably was somewhat effective in fighting infectious disease, right,

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Speaker 1: And of course they wouldn't know exactly what they had here,

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Speaker 1: but they knew they had some sort of beer that

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Speaker 1: seemed to some sort of of holy liquid that that

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Speaker 1: that had some sort of curative property to it exactly,

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Speaker 1: I mean, a fascinating discovery from the ancient world. Another

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Speaker 1: interesting fact, tetracycling is relatively unique in that it leaves

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Speaker 1: clear signatures in the bones that can be discovered long

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Speaker 1: after the person has died, so other antibiotics don't leave

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Speaker 1: these clear markers like this that make it easy for

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Speaker 1: archaeologists detect. So you have to wonder, like, are there

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Speaker 1: were there other cases of ancient peoples in various places

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Speaker 1: and times using some kind of antibiotics or bacterial or

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Speaker 1: fungal cultures uh to treat diseases like these ancient Nubian

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Speaker 1: people were, but that we don't have evidence of because

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Speaker 1: it doesn't show up in the bones like tetracyclin does. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it could have just been lost to history. I was

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Speaker 1: reading an interesting paper from Frontiers in Microbiology in two

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Speaker 1: thousand ten by A. Roost dam Aminov called a Brief

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Speaker 1: History of the Antibiotic Era, Lessons Learned and Challenges for

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Speaker 1: the Future. And Amanov points out this unique quality of

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Speaker 1: tetracycline and notes just what I was basically just saying,

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Speaker 1: like how easy it would be for evidence of other

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Speaker 1: uses of antibiotics in the ancient world to be lost

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Speaker 1: to us. Though he he also mentions that there are

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Speaker 1: other anecdotes from history about like cultural traditions that show

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Speaker 1: proto antibiotic technologies and these other examples would include red

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Speaker 1: soil is found in Jordans that are used for treating

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Speaker 1: skin infections. It's been discovered that these soils contain some

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Speaker 1: antibiotic producing organisms, though I guess there are probably also

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Speaker 1: some major risks in applying soil to wounds, and then

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Speaker 1: also plants used in traditional Chinese medicine that actually do

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Speaker 1: have some antimicrobial properties. Yeah, because one thing we have

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Speaker 1: to remember is like the modern antibiotic effort is ultimately

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Speaker 1: based in going out into the natural world and finding

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Speaker 1: these weapons that already exist and then reusing them and

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Speaker 1: adapting them for human medicine. And you know, this is

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Speaker 1: essentially what is going on in traditional medicines as well.

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Speaker 1: And it also means that there are weapons out there

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Speaker 1: that either have not been discovered at all at all,

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Speaker 1: especially in particularly vibrant ecosystems, some of which of course

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Speaker 1: are threatened. All the more reason to uh for us

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Speaker 1: to not decimate say the rain forests or the deep ocean.

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Speaker 1: But then there are also things that may have been

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Speaker 1: discovered to some degree in the past but have been forgotten. Well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that that does seem possible because despite all all

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Speaker 1: this evidence of ancient sort of proto antibiotic technologies. The

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Speaker 1: worldwide rates of death from infectious disease in the periods

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Speaker 1: for which we have data, right before the invention of

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Speaker 1: modern antibiotics shows that humans generally did not have effective

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Speaker 1: antimicrobials in that period. So maybe some of this knowledge

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Speaker 1: was lost over time. Alright, well, on that note, we're

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Speaker 1: going to take our first break. But when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we're going to return to the mold research of the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century and ultimately to our key inventor here, Alexander Fleming. Alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back now. We'll get to Alexander Fleming in a

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Speaker 1: minute with the discovery of penicillin. But Alexander Fleming was

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Speaker 1: not the first person to notice that there might be

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Speaker 1: some anti microbial properties of certain fun guy. That's right,

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Speaker 1: there was, there was work going on in this area

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Speaker 1: prior to Flaming. Flaming was was, you know, picking up

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Speaker 1: on some of it, and uh, and really just overall

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Speaker 1: just our understanding of a fun guy in general was

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Speaker 1: was advancing. As we mentioned in our Psychedelics episodes, you know,

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Speaker 1: there was a time where we did not recognize fun

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Speaker 1: guy as being separate from the realm of plants before

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Speaker 1: we realized that it was a kingdom unto itself and

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Speaker 1: almost ultimately a kingdom that has a little more in

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Speaker 1: common with the animal Kingdom than it does with the

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Speaker 1: plant Kingdom. And uh, there are a lot of talented

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Speaker 1: folks working in this area, but one of them, mind

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Speaker 1: comes as a surprise to a lot of people. Um,

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Speaker 1: and that's because her name was Beatrix Potter. Uh the

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Speaker 1: way the bunny rabbit, the bunny rabbits, yes, off the

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Speaker 1: bunny rabbit fame. Uh, that was It was kind of

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Speaker 1: a curious coincidence because I was reading about all this

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Speaker 1: and then just randomly on the Stuff to Blow your

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Speaker 1: Mind discussion module, which is the Facebook group for people

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Speaker 1: who listen to the show to this ust episodes, someone

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Speaker 1: brought up Beatrix's Potter in regards to something to do

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Speaker 1: with squirrels, because there's a lot of squirrel uh a

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Speaker 1: squirrel content in the discussion module, And yeah, they brought

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Speaker 1: up Patrick's Potter. And Beatrix's Potter actually ties into this

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Speaker 1: episode a little bit because, in addition to being the

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Speaker 1: author and illustrator of the you know, the Tale of

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Speaker 1: Peter Rabbit and associated British animal tales, she was also

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Speaker 1: a naturalist with a great deal of interest in astronomy

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Speaker 1: and most importantly of all, mycology. So she produced a

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Speaker 1: lot of just beautiful scientific watercolor illustrations of various fun

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Speaker 1: guy uh in her you know neck of the British woods, um,

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Speaker 1: and you know, as part of her studies, and she

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Speaker 1: studied a lot of local molds as well and did

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Speaker 1: illustrations of them. Uh. You know, she's she's ultimately a

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Speaker 1: very interesting character. That was you know, Unfortunately she lived

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Speaker 1: in a time in which, you know, the sexism of

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Speaker 1: the day prevented her from i think reaching the heights

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Speaker 1: of in the natural sciences that she would have been

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Speaker 1: afforded later on. But and then a lot of her

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Speaker 1: work is also just being i think rediscovered and appreciated

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Speaker 1: for the first time, you know, in recent decades. But

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Speaker 1: but yeah, the next time someone busts out some theatrics potter,

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Speaker 1: remember this is not just an individual who wrote some

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Speaker 1: fanciful tales and illustrated them like she was also just

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Speaker 1: she was out there studying the natural world and uh

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Speaker 1: and created in advancing our understanding of a mycology. She

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Speaker 1: was sort of looking into the hidden life of nature.

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Speaker 1: In multiple ways. Yeah, And you know, and I see

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Speaker 1: some sources out that they are like asking the question, Okay,

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Speaker 1: was Theatric's potter or she or a true naturalist, a

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Speaker 1: true natural scientists over she just a uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: an amateur that was just very interested in these things.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know, it's kind of a complicated question

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Speaker 1: to ask when you consider like the limitations uh in

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Speaker 1: the Victorian era for women. But I think undoubtedly she

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Speaker 1: she I would side with the fact that she was

429
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:02,800
Speaker 1: a natural scientist. I mean, she authored or co authored

430
00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:06,640
Speaker 1: one paper if I remember correctly, So I'm gonna give her,

431
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 1: give her full credit. Was it about a fun guy?

432
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: It was? It was it was a mushroom in particular. Um,

433
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:14,639
Speaker 1: I forget it was one of those related to the

434
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:19,200
Speaker 1: rusula mushrooms, but I forget which species. But but yeah,

435
00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:21,239
Speaker 1: basically she was you know, she was kind of up

436
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:26,640
Speaker 1: up against the patriarchy for the most part. Though. Yeah, Well,

437
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: is it time to turn to penicillin itself? Yes, let's

438
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:32,680
Speaker 1: turn to this the key discovery here and our inventor,

439
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 1: our discoverer, Alexander Fleming. Okay, so who was Alexander Fleming? Okay?

440
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:40,480
Speaker 1: So Fleming was born in eighteen eighty one died in

441
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:43,920
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five and he was a Scottish biologist, physician,

442
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:48,160
Speaker 1: microbiologist and pharmacologist. He was the son of a farmer

443
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 1: and he observed and studied a great deal of death

444
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: from sepsis in World War One. He observed that while

445
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 1: um anti septics worked well at the surface, a deeper

446
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:04,679
Speaker 1: wounds sheltered bacteria from the effects of things like sulfa drugs. Right, So,

447
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:07,320
Speaker 1: if you have a kind of superficial wound, you could

448
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: clean it off pretty good and that might help protect

449
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,719
Speaker 1: you from from bacterial infection. But if you have a

450
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:17,120
Speaker 1: deep wound and say like dirty stuff, bits of soil

451
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,160
Speaker 1: and other you know, just crud gets lodged deep in there,

452
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: you might not be able to clean the wound out

453
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:24,639
Speaker 1: very well. Right, And that's exactly the kind of stuff

454
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:26,880
Speaker 1: that's gonna get lodged in there, especially with your war

455
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: wounds where there is a you know, a stab or

456
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: you know, or or a deep cut, or a bullet

457
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: entering the body. What makes me think about the when

458
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:39,679
Speaker 1: we were reading about the idea of Stegosaurus, perhaps weapon

459
00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 1: iz I mean not consciously, but the stegosaurus perhaps uh

460
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: having an adaptation to weaponize infection against its enemies by

461
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:52,200
Speaker 1: dragging its thagamizer spikes through the dong exactly. Yeah, having

462
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: dirty thagamizer spikes and then when it wacks the t

463
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:57,880
Speaker 1: rex in the crotch with them, that that gets infected

464
00:26:57,960 --> 00:27:01,000
Speaker 1: later and eliminates a predator from the area. Yeah. And uh,

465
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 1: the the predators of the day would not have had

466
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:06,800
Speaker 1: access to antibiotics certainly not or even that beer from

467
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier. So uh, Fleming was you know,

468
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:15,240
Speaker 1: devoted himself to research and he uh prior to penicillin,

469
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 1: he discovered lysozyme and naturally occurring enzyme and mucus and

470
00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: other parts of the body then inhibits bacteria. So you know,

471
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 1: he was already you know, in this this area, you know,

472
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:30,639
Speaker 1: looking for for new new breakthrough his new discoveries. But

473
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: then his biggest breakthrough of all is this discovery of penicillin.

474
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: And it's truly one of the more amazing invention slash

475
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: discovery moments from history because while he was exactly the

476
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,719
Speaker 1: right person to make the discovery and then deserves all

477
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: the credit he was given, the key moment comes down

478
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: really to pure luck, and we simply don't know if

479
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 1: anyone else would have made the discovery if he had

480
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:56,600
Speaker 1: not been there to observe it. Okay, so what happened

481
00:27:56,640 --> 00:28:00,400
Speaker 1: with this discovery? So around like ninety seven or so,

482
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:04,359
Speaker 1: he had engaged himself in studying um staff Lecock either

483
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:07,360
Speaker 1: or you know staff, and he had stacks of Petrie

484
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 1: dishes dish specimens in his lab, which I've seen described

485
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: as being kind of an untidy lab. So you know,

486
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: imagining all these like like Petrie dishes, full staff all

487
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,439
Speaker 1: over the place, notes and so forth. And so the

488
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:23,480
Speaker 1: key moment comes in September of nine, right, right, So

489
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 1: he has he has the staff Petrie dishes out and

490
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: then he leaves them for the weekend to go on

491
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: holiday with his family, and he when he comes back,

492
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: he expects to just see how they've progressed, see how

493
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: they've grown, but he finds that they haven't grown. In fact,

494
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: they have died. Something has ravaged his specimens. Yeah, now,

495
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 1: it's this is one of those stories where he gets

496
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 1: very narrativised. So you do have to wonder if some

497
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: details of it are embellished, how the story may have

498
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: changed over time. But This is the way the story

499
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: has been passed down, and and I think it seems

500
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: to be largely basically true. Uh. The way that I've

501
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: seen the story often told is that he comes in,

502
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: there's a blob of mold growing in one of the plates,

503
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 1: and all around the mold there's this halo of nothingness where,

504
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:09,239
Speaker 1: you know, normally what you would see is that if

505
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: you've got a plate for culturing bacteria, there would be

506
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 1: these dots and blobs on the on the plate, but

507
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 1: instead there's this halo where there's no bacteria, bacterial dead zone. Now,

508
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 1: of course we know Staphylococcus is is a bacterium group

509
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: linked to all kinds of human disease and misery. I

510
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: think staff infections. Right, if this mold could kill staff,

511
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 1: that seems medically relevant. So what happened here? Well, Um

512
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 1: he realized that he was dealing with some sort of

513
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: a fun guy, you know, so he luckily there was

514
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: a mycologist with a lab just below Fleming on the

515
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: floor below his lab, a man by the name of C. J.

516
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:50,160
Speaker 1: La Touche. And in fact, it's also been suspected that

517
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:55,440
Speaker 1: the mold and question that killed Um Fleming's staff might

518
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: have drifted up from Latch's lab, adding an extra element

519
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:02,640
Speaker 1: of we your chance to this whole situation. Okay, so

520
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 1: perhaps his samples were contaminated by stuff from the lab

521
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:10,479
Speaker 1: next door down the floor. That's that's what that's not.

522
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 1: That's not a theory that's presented in every source, but

523
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: it does pop up fairly frequently. So specifically, this mold

524
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:20,120
Speaker 1: was what would later be identified as a strain of

525
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: Penicillium notatum, and it was obvious that it secreted something

526
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: that prevented staff bacteria from growing, and so Fleming followed

527
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: up in studying this secretion, this this mold juice as

528
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 1: I've seen it called uh he. He He found that it

529
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:39,920
Speaker 1: didn't only prevent the growth of Staphylococcus, it worked against

530
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 1: common bacteria like Streptococcus or ninja caucus and uh and

531
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 1: thea also against the bacterium that causes diphtheria. Interestingly, while

532
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 1: Fleming did see applications for penicillin and curing disease, and

533
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 1: he mentioned them briefly in the paper he published in

534
00:30:55,520 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: ninety nine about this discovery about the anti bacterial properties

535
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: of Penicillium uh he primarily thought of this secretion of

536
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: penicillium as a tool for bacteriologists to sort strains of

537
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 1: bacteria basically into penicillin sensitive versus non penicillin sensitive species,

538
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 1: and that that that could be useful in the lab. Yeah,

539
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 1: so he sometimes criticized is really not understanding completely what

540
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: he had here, not having the vision to see where

541
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: it could go. Well, I don't think he completely understood,

542
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 1: but he did indicate that this could possibly have uses

543
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:36,240
Speaker 1: in medicine. Um So Fleming and his assistance Stuart Kratak

544
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: and Frederick Ridley tried for years to turn this accidental

545
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 1: discovery into a stable, isolated compound that would be useful.

546
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,320
Speaker 1: And this is this was a problem because like so

547
00:31:48,360 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: you've got this secretion from the mold, it molds, making

548
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 1: some juice. It's kind of getting stuff wet with this

549
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 1: this stuff that that that fights bacterial growth. But they

550
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: couldn't isolate the comp hound that was causing the effect

551
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: and stabilize it and make it make it generally useful.

552
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 1: So to quote from Amanov's paper Amanov that I mentioned earlier, quote,

553
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 1: for twelve years after his initial observation, Alexander Fleming was

554
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: trying to get chemists interested in resolving persisting problems with

555
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: the purification and stability of the active substance, and supplied

556
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 1: the penicillium strain to anyone requesting it. But he really

557
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: he could never crack the nut ultimately, and he didn't

558
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 1: finally make this discovery of the process for for stabilizing

559
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 1: and isolating the compound. And by Amanov writes that Fleming

560
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 1: finally abandoned dis quest. But fortunately it was right about

561
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: that time that a capable team at Oxford University, including

562
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: the researchers Howard Floory and Earnst Chain or China, they

563
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: picked up on this research and they they kicked off

564
00:32:56,720 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: the research project that would eventually break through on this. Uh.

565
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: And they're all these interesting stories. So of course this

566
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 1: is wild. World War two is going on, so research

567
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: conditions are not ideal. And uh, they're all these stories

568
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 1: about how they turned their lab at Oxford into this

569
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 1: giant incubation center or sort of factory for mold. Like

570
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 1: they employed all these lab assistants who are these women

571
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:22,200
Speaker 1: who had been referred to in some sources as the

572
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:26,239
Speaker 1: penicillin girls, and they would work to like to they

573
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: would work to grow the penicillin and buckets and tubs

574
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 1: and basically every container that they could um and uh,

575
00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: eventually they did. They were able to isolate and stabilize

576
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: this compound. So to quote from an article from the

577
00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:45,480
Speaker 1: American Chemical Society, quote in nineteen forty Floory and that

578
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: would be Howard Flory carried out vital experiments showing that

579
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: penicillin could protect mice against infection from deadly strepped to

580
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:57,440
Speaker 1: cock eye. Then, on February twelve, nineteen forty one, a

581
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:01,400
Speaker 1: forty three year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first

582
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 1: recipient of the Oxford penicillin. He'd scratched the side of

583
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:08,640
Speaker 1: his mouth while pruning roses and had developed a life

584
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 1: threatening infection with huge abscesses affecting his eyes, face, and lungs.

585
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:17,759
Speaker 1: Penicillin was injected and within days he made a remarkable recovery.

586
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:22,360
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, despite this recovery, which lasted for a few days,

587
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 1: they ran out of the drug and Alexander eventually got

588
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: worse again and he died. And I was reading that

589
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: they were so desperate to cure him that after Alexander

590
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:35,960
Speaker 1: urinated while on his antibiotic course, they would collect the

591
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 1: urine and try to extract the penicillin he excreted again

592
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,160
Speaker 1: so that it could be re administered to him. Uh.

593
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:45,520
Speaker 1: And I should mention also that the process that the

594
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: Oxford team relied on to extract and purify the penicillin

595
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:52,279
Speaker 1: in the mold juice was led by another important biochemist,

596
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: a guy named Norman Heatley. But this case of Albert

597
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:58,880
Speaker 1: Alexander shows an obvious early problem they had, which was

598
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: the problem of ska old. They simply lacked the ability

599
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: to make penicillin at the scale that would be needed

600
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:09,160
Speaker 1: to treat even one person, let alone the whole world. Uh.

601
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:11,960
Speaker 1: The strain of mold that they were using didn't make

602
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 1: enough of it, and this led to the search for

603
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: other species of the same fungal genus Penicillium, which would,

604
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:23,080
Speaker 1: maybe they thought, produce higher concentrations of the penicillin filter rate.

605
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:26,319
Speaker 1: And I was reading an interesting article by the University

606
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:30,480
Speaker 1: of Michigan physician and medical historian Howard Markle that tells

607
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 1: a really interesting story. I've never heard about this. Uh.

608
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: So the story goes like this. Apparently, one of the

609
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:39,359
Speaker 1: assistants at the Oxford lab showed up for work one

610
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,800
Speaker 1: day in ninety one with a cantalope that she'd bought

611
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 1: at the market because it was covered in a weird

612
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: looking golden mold, which is great because this would be

613
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: the one case where somebody is picking over the fresh

614
00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:53,920
Speaker 1: produce produced to like find the MOULDI one, But the

615
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: mold on this cantalope turned out to be a strain

616
00:35:56,560 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 1: of penicillium called Penicillium chryso geum, which Marco says naturally

617
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 1: produced at least about two hundred times as much penicillin

618
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:08,919
Speaker 1: as the original strain that they've been studying. And then

619
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: later Marco writes that the same strain was subjected to

620
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 1: mutagenic processes in the labs, like bombarding it with X

621
00:36:15,080 --> 00:36:18,479
Speaker 1: rays and stuff, to produce a mutated strain that would

622
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 1: make up to a thousand times as much penicillin as

623
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: the old school fleming mold. So by penicillin is on

624
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:28,680
Speaker 1: its way to becoming a viable medicine. All right. On

625
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take a quick break and

626
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna look at the impact

627
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: of penicillin, and we're gonna look at it, and I

628
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: think a fun way by considering a really interesting what

629
00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: if alright, we're back. So we often don't don't do

630
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: a lot of what IF's on invention. I thought we

631
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 1: we kind of do. It's a certain extent, but I

632
00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: mean a lot of times it's a harder case be

633
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,280
Speaker 1: made for, like what if this had not been invention

634
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:06,759
Speaker 1: invented right bit or discovered because in most cases you

635
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:09,400
Speaker 1: can you can you can look at the data, you

636
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:11,359
Speaker 1: can look at other individuals work, Like if the Right

637
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 1: brothers had not invented the airplane, uh, had not you know,

638
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:18,719
Speaker 1: created that that first prototype that really showed what was possible. Like,

639
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:20,880
Speaker 1: clearly there were there were other individuals in the world

640
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 1: working on this. Someone would have cracked it. If if

641
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 1: Runkin had not discovered X rays in eighteen ninety whatever

642
00:37:28,719 --> 00:37:31,719
Speaker 1: year it was, somebody else would have discovered them pretty soon. Right,

643
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: But when it comes to penicillin, uh, it potentially gets

644
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:38,279
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that. I ran across a

645
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:41,439
Speaker 1: cool article on the topic titled what if Fleming had

646
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:45,240
Speaker 1: not discovered penicillin? And this was published in the Saudi

647
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:50,480
Speaker 1: Journal Um of Biological Sciences by al Harvey at All.

648
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 1: The authors admit that that certainly, if Fleming hadn't made

649
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 1: the discovery someone else might have in the years to follow,

650
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: probably you know, in the early nineteen forties. They they estimate,

651
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: so we could still well have it have arrived in

652
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: the antibacterial age. However, they also explore the possibility that

653
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:10,959
Speaker 1: we might have simply not made the discovery at all,

654
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: and it's an interesting argument. So I want to read

655
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:17,480
Speaker 1: a quote from the paper here. Quote. Of course, penicillin

656
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: could have been discovered the day after Fleming missed the opportunity,

657
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: but in reality, there was no parallel discovery that took place.

658
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 1: As a result, anyone taking an interest in penicillin during

659
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties did so in the knowledge of Fleming's work.

660
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 1: In particular, there seems no reason to believe that Flory

661
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:39,360
Speaker 1: and Chain would have discovered penicillin, since their work depended

662
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:42,480
Speaker 1: on Fleming's famous paper and their access to one of

663
00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:45,799
Speaker 1: his penicillin producing cultures. Okay, so that's referring to the

664
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 1: thing I mentioned about how how Fleming and his assistance

665
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:53,960
Speaker 1: were just like sharing the penicillium straining out with everybody, like, hey,

666
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:55,839
Speaker 1: can you figure out what's going on with this? Can

667
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: you isolate the secretion or the compound in the secretion. Yeah,

668
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:01,359
Speaker 1: so so to think about that there was there was

669
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 1: so far as these researchers could determine, you know, no

670
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 1: other effort out there that would have struck paydir. In

671
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 1: the absence of Fleming's research, the Oxford group wouldn't have

672
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:15,200
Speaker 1: been looking for it. Selman Waksman, the father of modern

673
00:39:15,200 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: antibiotics is he sometimes called, who made several key discoveries later,

674
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 1: was also inspired by Fleming. So it's it's one of

675
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:25,879
Speaker 1: these cases where like he seems to be the epicenter uh,

676
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: well not not only him, but just then the the

677
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 1: the the seemingly chance encounter h in his lab that

678
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:36,880
Speaker 1: day that that where suddenly this halo appears in the

679
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 1: petri dish, and that gives birth to a to a

680
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 1: whole class of other discoveries. Right, because not all UH

681
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 1: antibiotics are derived from penicillin, the penicillin class of antibiotics

682
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: becomes sort of like one sort of grandfather class. But

683
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 1: then there are all these other classes that are discovered

684
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,600
Speaker 1: during this golden age of antibiotics that takes place over

685
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: the next few decades. Yeah, and they're very just additional

686
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: medical breakthroughs that would not have occurred without penicillin, such

687
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:08,360
Speaker 1: as organ transplant. But then there's also the question like

688
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 1: what would have what would have happened in the wider world,

689
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 1: because again, penicillin comes online during the Second World War,

690
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,279
Speaker 1: and so that you can easily ask, well, what would

691
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 1: have happened if Allied troops had not benefited from access

692
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:25,439
Speaker 1: to antibiotics that D Day? I've never thought about that.

693
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,759
Speaker 1: In fact, before looking at this episode, I probably would

694
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:30,839
Speaker 1: not have known the answer to whether or not they

695
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 1: had access to antibiotics. Well, penicillin production was actually swiftly

696
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 1: scaled up just to make sure that Allied soldiers had

697
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: access to it at D Day. UM, So there's a

698
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:45,080
Speaker 1: legitimate question to be asked, might the Allies not have

699
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: won the Second World War without penicillin? Um? I think

700
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: there are a lot of factors to consider there. I

701
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: don't think that it's quite a gotcha question, but it's

702
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: it's worth thinking about. The authors argue that without Fleming's discovery,

703
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: we would have had to do and on the sulfa drugs, uh,

704
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 1: you know, an imperfect alternative to true antibiotics, and these

705
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: uh you know, these were described in the nineteen thirties

706
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,360
Speaker 1: and Fleming worked with him prior to his discovery, but

707
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 1: without penicillin in play, the authors argue that sulfa drugs

708
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 1: might have become the standard and even pushed the discovery

709
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: of true um antibiotics well beyond the nineteen sixties. And

710
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: this is also true of the Access Powers had risen

711
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 1: in victorious in World War Two, because the Access Powers

712
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 1: depended on sulfa drugs as their their key treatment. Um.

713
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:36,520
Speaker 1: You know, they do point point out that, you know, quote,

714
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the Germans and their allies were

715
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 1: at a considerable disadvantage, Uh, the sulfa drugs did a

716
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:44,320
Speaker 1: relatively good job at reducing battle casualties. So not to

717
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: just completely um, you know, cast aside the effectiveness of

718
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 1: sulfa drugs, but still they were not as effective as

719
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,840
Speaker 1: true antibiotics. It's weird to think about the political implications

720
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:57,439
Speaker 1: of specific medical technologies. Yeah, and then when you get

721
00:41:57,480 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: down to the curious cases of individuals, it also gets interesting.

722
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 1: We already touched on presidents who died that would have

723
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,840
Speaker 1: lived potentially if there had been penicillin around. Uh. And

724
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: so they point out that that SOFA drugs saved Churchill's

725
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:16,279
Speaker 1: life in ninety three when he was suffering from pneumonia

726
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: as well as FDR's life. But there's also evidence by

727
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: the way that actual penicillin may have saved Hitler's life.

728
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:30,799
Speaker 1: Following the Staffenberg assassination attempt of July nine, this was

729
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 1: the plot that tried to kill Hitler with a briefcase bomb,

730
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 1: like where some of the officers conspired against him and

731
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: they put a briefcase bomb in the room with him,

732
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,279
Speaker 1: and it did explode, but he was protected by like

733
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: a heavy table that prevented it from killing him. He

734
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 1: was obviously injured, and I think he had like nerve

735
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: damage after that. So the idea here is that perhaps

736
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 1: his injuries were treated by by penicillan. Yeah, that's at

737
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: least an argument has been made that they had access

738
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: to penicillin. I'm unclear on how they would have obtained it,

739
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure maybe there's a spy story there.

740
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,400
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the idea being, well, if he

741
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 1: had if he had didn't have access to penicillin, then

742
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 1: perhaps he would have died, and that would have arguably

743
00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:13,720
Speaker 1: ended the war, you know, in a different manner, forcing

744
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: us to reimagine an entirely different post war world. So

745
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 1: again we're playing with with what EFF's here and and

746
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,359
Speaker 1: also we in my understanding is we don't know for

747
00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:27,760
Speaker 1: sure that Hitler had access to penicillin following that assassination attempt,

748
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:31,800
Speaker 1: but there is the overall scenario of the Allies having

749
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 1: penicillin and having this ramped up penicillin production leading into

750
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,399
Speaker 1: D Day. Yeah, that is really interesting. I had never

751
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 1: contemplated that before. Um Now, something that I we do

752
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: often have to think about and we should probably acknowledge

753
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:46,400
Speaker 1: at the end here before we move on. Maybe this

754
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:48,840
Speaker 1: will be something to come back and UH do in

755
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:52,720
Speaker 1: the future with a recent invention episode is the idea

756
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 1: of a possible end of the antibiotics age. I mean,

757
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:58,319
Speaker 1: this is a kind of scary thing to imagine, Like

758
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 1: what if the antibiot next age is essentially a period

759
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: in history that has a beginning and an end. Because

760
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 1: as we you've you've probably heard about this, many disease

761
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:13,200
Speaker 1: causing bacteria and other disease causing microbes are over time

762
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:19,359
Speaker 1: evolving antibiotic resistance are evolving to to be powerful enough

763
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:23,319
Speaker 1: to survive our antimicrobial drugs. And I think specifically one

764
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: thing that's exacerbating this is overuse of antibiotics and people

765
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:31,439
Speaker 1: not taking the entire course of antibiotics when they're given them. Yeah,

766
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:34,320
Speaker 1: because again, to come back to the Zagdamoy jubile X

767
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: war scenario, you know, it is an ongoing battle and

768
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:43,359
Speaker 1: the forces evolve, uh to uh to better deal with

769
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:48,080
Speaker 1: the threats on each side. And so you know, we're

770
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 1: we're we're we're seeing this occur. We're seeing the overuse

771
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 1: of antibiotics producing uh, you know, strains that are that

772
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:58,280
Speaker 1: are resistant, and it's reversing some of the therapeutic miracles

773
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: of the last fifty years, and and underscores the importance

774
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: of disease prevention in addition to treatment, and that means

775
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:07,719
Speaker 1: not not abandoning some of our other vital tools for

776
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:10,399
Speaker 1: human health like vaccination. Oh yeah, we should come back

777
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 1: and revisit vaccinations or maybe even various different vaccinations in

778
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah. Another thing to keep in mind that

779
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned earlier was that the nineteen

780
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: forties through the nineteen seventies are are considered like the

781
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 1: golden age of antibiotic research, and we haven't seen at

782
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 1: least if we haven't seen any new classes of antibiotics

783
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: emerged since that time period right now, there have been

784
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 1: new developments in antibiotics, but I think the way I've

785
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: read it is that they're generally modifications on existing classes

786
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:43,760
Speaker 1: of antibiotics, sort of like we we haven't. We haven't

787
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: found anything radically new since then. Basically, we reached out

788
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 1: into the natural war between between fungi and the microbial legions,

789
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: and we we stole some of the tools, We stole

790
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:59,440
Speaker 1: some of that Promethean fire when we we keep adapting

791
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: that fire to our own purposes, but we haven't. We

792
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:05,759
Speaker 1: haven't found any new weapon from that world. And uh,

793
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 1: and then their ongoing war continues to change. I'd be interested.

794
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: Do you out there, you the listener, do you work

795
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 1: in medical research? Are you working on areas involved in

796
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 1: antibiotic resistance? The future of anti microbials? I please get

797
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: in touch with us. I would like to hear about that.

798
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:24,880
Speaker 1: What what are you doing in your work and what

799
00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:28,799
Speaker 1: does the future look like to you on the inside. Absolutely,

800
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 1: we would we would love to hear from you. Again,

801
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:35,440
Speaker 1: we've only really scratched the surface here though thanks to antibiotics,

802
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: hopefully that scratch will not uh get interested life threatening infection.

803
00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:42,400
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's a lot more history here, but but

804
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:45,040
Speaker 1: hopefully what we've done here today is of course highlight

805
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:48,279
Speaker 1: just a very very cool story from the history of

806
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 1: inventions and discoveries and human history and outlined the impact

807
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: of of one of the greatest inventions or discoveries. Again,

808
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: however you want to classify it from the toy a century, yeah, totally.

809
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

810
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: episodes of Invention, you can check out our homepage. It's

811
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:10,319
Speaker 1: invention pod dot com and that will have all the

812
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 1: episodes right there. If you want to support the show,

813
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 1: and we would appreciate it if you did support the show,

814
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: there are a few simple things you can do. Tell

815
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:19,720
Speaker 1: friends about it, you know, tell tell your family members

816
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 1: about Invention, and then if you have the ability to

817
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: do so, rate and review us wherever you got this podcast.

818
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:30,280
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Maya Cole.

819
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:32,200
Speaker 1: If you'd like to get in touch with us to

820
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: let us know feedback on this episode or any other,

821
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:37,240
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,

822
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.

823
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,799
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824
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