Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and Robert. I know you want to talk
Speaker 1: about D and D before we get to the real subject. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I was thinking about doing it last.
Speaker 1: We can go ahead and talk about it up front. Um. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: in Dungeons and Dragons, Uh, you have all these various
Speaker 1: demon lords. Uh and uh, they they rule over various
Speaker 1: sort of portions of the of of the fiend population
Speaker 1: in the game. And there are two demon lords in
Speaker 1: particular that I was thinking about in regards to today's episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that that would be zug Boy and jubile X.
Speaker 1: So zug Boy is the the demon Lord of fun Guy,
Speaker 1: the Queen of fun Guy, the master of Decay, and
Speaker 1: then opposing her, Um Everett odds with her is jubile X,
Speaker 1: the Faceless Lord, which is a god of uzas and
Speaker 1: slimes and blobs, you know, all the the using nasty
Speaker 1: creatures of Dungeons and Dragons. And yeah, they're they oppose
Speaker 1: each other. They're constant war with each other and in
Speaker 1: some campaigns like their forces and even there they're you know,
Speaker 1: embodied forms do battle with one another, and it actually
Speaker 1: ties in a bit with the subject we're talking about
Speaker 1: today of penicillin. Okay, so penicillin the fungus that fights
Speaker 1: I don't know, would you call diseases slimes? Well, I
Speaker 1: feel like jubile X being the demon lord of uzes
Speaker 1: and slimes kind of makes it the demon lord of
Speaker 1: of microbiology as well, and you know, microves and uh
Speaker 1: and microbial illnesses. So okay, Well, so today we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about penicillin. I guess maybe one of
Speaker 1: the great real weapons of zug Tamoi. But this this
Speaker 1: came up, I think because we've been talking about fungus
Speaker 1: on our other podcasts on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: where we just finished recording a five part series on psychedelics.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, looking at fungal psychedelics and ongoing research into
Speaker 1: how these substances could enhance our mental well being and
Speaker 1: helping the treatment of the psychological issues. And one of
Speaker 1: our big take homes was that these fungi could help
Speaker 1: save lives and improve the quality of human life. But
Speaker 1: it would not be the first or only fung gui
Speaker 1: to do so, because we can certainly look to various
Speaker 1: interactions between human hell the different fungi species and their use,
Speaker 1: and traditional medicine. We can point to various products including
Speaker 1: you know, products of fermentation, for instance, including alcohol. But
Speaker 1: there's an even better example of better living through fungi,
Speaker 1: and that's penicillin. Right, So today we're going to briefly
Speaker 1: explore the invention of penicillin, which is often cited as
Speaker 1: the first true antibiotic technology. Of course, antibiotics or medications
Speaker 1: that treat infections by killing, injuring, or slowing the growth
Speaker 1: of bacteria in the body, and antibiotics are a class
Speaker 1: of what you would generally call antimicrobial drugs, medicines that
Speaker 1: kill microbes that present a threat to the body. Of course,
Speaker 1: an antibiotics generally fight bacterial infections, whereas you could have
Speaker 1: others like anti fungals that fight fungal infections or anti
Speaker 1: virals that fight viral infections. Now, antimicrobials and antibiotics are
Speaker 1: a gigantic subject area that we're of course not going
Speaker 1: to be able to get into every nook and cranny
Speaker 1: of the subject, but we hope we could have an
Speaker 1: interesting introductory introductory discussion, maybe come back to antibiotics sometime
Speaker 1: again in the future, because it's a it's a broad
Speaker 1: invention that has lots of little invention tributaries throughout history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is such a fascinating case to look at,
Speaker 1: and I think should make for a great episode of
Speaker 1: invention here because for starters, it's it's a twentieth century
Speaker 1: invention slash discovery. Often, of course, the line between invision
Speaker 1: and discovery is a little bit gray, but we can, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can pinpoint it and ultimately like rolled out by
Speaker 1: or so, but that we can, we can look to it.
Speaker 1: We can look at the world before, and we can
Speaker 1: look at the world after with it with the sort
Speaker 1: of clarity that we don't always have with certainly older
Speaker 1: or more ancient inventions. Exactly because we always like to
Speaker 1: ask the question on this show, what came before the invention?
Speaker 1: What what changed when this invention came on the scene. Uh,
Speaker 1: And what came before widespread modern antibiotics was stupendous amounts
Speaker 1: of death and misery from infectious disease in blood poisoning.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, like, is it even possible to to
Speaker 1: get stats on what the world of infectious disease looked
Speaker 1: like before we had antibiotics around the mid twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, to a certain extent, a lot of the
Speaker 1: suffering is just incalculable, um, you know, especially if you
Speaker 1: go back and sort of consider all of human history
Speaker 1: up to that point and the various factors that that
Speaker 1: influenced infectious disease and injury, you know, the eventually the
Speaker 1: rise of germ theory, but also the things like they
Speaker 1: the rise of cities and so forth. But but LUCKI yea,
Speaker 1: since it was such a recent invention, we have some
Speaker 1: pretty incredible stats on the matter. Um, you know, suddenly
Speaker 1: thinks to this new miracle drug, diseases that had simply
Speaker 1: ravaged the global population, like syphilis, could be cured. The
Speaker 1: shadow of lethal infection no longer hung, at least as
Speaker 1: heavily over every scrape, injury and war wound and with
Speaker 1: wounds were often talking about sepsis, which is a term
Speaker 1: that was used by Hippocrates back in the fourth century
Speaker 1: b c. Meaning blood rod or blood poisoning, and he
Speaker 1: was referring more generally, I think, to decay, but the
Speaker 1: term came to be applied to blood poisoning, which arises
Speaker 1: when the body's response to infection causes causes injury to
Speaker 1: its own tissue and organs. But just prior to the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, infectious diseases accounted for high morbidity and mortality
Speaker 1: rates around the world, even in the industrialized world. According
Speaker 1: to W. A. Adgy in the Treasure called Antibiotics, from
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, the average life expectancy at birth was
Speaker 1: forty seven years, forty six and forty eight years from
Speaker 1: men and women, respectively, and this was due to the
Speaker 1: dangers of smallpox, uh cholera, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid fever, plague, tuberculosis, typhus, syphilis,
Speaker 1: and a host of other ailments that could afflict you.
Speaker 1: And then during the antibiotic era that follow again you know,
Speaker 1: arising in the middle of the twenty century, the leading
Speaker 1: cause of death in the United States changed from communicable
Speaker 1: diseases to non communicable diseases like cardio cardiovascular disease, cancer,
Speaker 1: and stroke, and the average life ex expectancy at birth
Speaker 1: rose to seventy eight point eight years, so the elderly
Speaker 1: were no longer a mere four percent of the population,
Speaker 1: but grow to become a whopping percent of the population.
Speaker 1: So you know, we're talking about you know, profound changes
Speaker 1: just to demographics based on this new uh, this new invention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the change is huge. I mean, we live in a
Speaker 1: world now where if you have access to high quality
Speaker 1: modern medicine, and a lot of people don't, I mean
Speaker 1: that's something mind. But if you have access to high quality,
Speaker 1: modern science based medicine and you can get antibiotics and uh,
Speaker 1: and you can get to a hospital or see a doctor,
Speaker 1: you very likely have a good chance to beat most
Speaker 1: of the common infectious diseases that people get unless you
Speaker 1: have some kind of you know, like another condition that
Speaker 1: exacerbates it or something. Before antibiotics, this was just not
Speaker 1: that people just died from diseases that you catch, like
Speaker 1: diseases that are common for people to catch all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or you had certain diseases like syphilis that were virtually uncurable,
Speaker 1: you know, and and some of the the cures that
Speaker 1: were attempted were pretty horrendous, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: had and and generally did not work, you know, talking
Speaker 1: about like using mercury and so forth. And you mentioned
Speaker 1: before contamination of wounds. I mean, this is just a
Speaker 1: huge thing, just like you know, you might, uh, you
Speaker 1: might cut yourself while gardening and you die from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Heaven forbid you undergo say medieval gall stone surgery
Speaker 1: or something like that. By the way, I think tuberculosis
Speaker 1: has a you know, is a good example to look
Speaker 1: at for some of these stats as well. According to
Speaker 1: the c d C, t B was a leading cause
Speaker 1: of death in the US in nineteen forty prior to
Speaker 1: the rollout of antibiotic therapy in nineteen hundred, a hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety four of every hundred thousand US residents died
Speaker 1: from the t B. Uh. Most were residents of urban areas.
Speaker 1: In nineteen hundred, the three leading causes of death in
Speaker 1: the US word pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhea and uh enteritis,
Speaker 1: which together with diphtheria, caused one third of all deaths,
Speaker 1: and of these deaths, forty percent were among children aged
Speaker 1: less than five years old. Now, to your point, and
Speaker 1: not everybody has the access to antibiotics that say people
Speaker 1: enjoy and say Europe in the United States, Um, Yeah.
Speaker 1: T remains a leading cause of death from an infectious
Speaker 1: disease in many parts of the world, particularly the developing world,
Speaker 1: and some antibiotic treatments or antibiotic assisted treatments are more
Speaker 1: complicated and more difficult than others. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: the treatment for TB is not as say, easy as
Speaker 1: the round of just orally administered antibiotics that you might
Speaker 1: get for a standard bacterial infection. Right but it's suddenly
Speaker 1: it was just a heralded rightfully so is as a
Speaker 1: miracle invention. When it came about you, I saw an
Speaker 1: image of of a sign I think a garbage can
Speaker 1: ra a mailbox from the mid twentieth century, advertising that
Speaker 1: now you can get gonna recured in in uh like
Speaker 1: four hours thanks to the you know, these new developments
Speaker 1: in antibiotics. You know, it's just a it can be
Speaker 1: difficult to put ourselves in that mindset, having grown up
Speaker 1: in the wake of antihiblotics, or at least most of us,
Speaker 1: most people listening to this show. I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about how many like US presidents died of infections of
Speaker 1: various kinds. Uh that that that seems like that would
Speaker 1: be a very unusual thing to happen now, But like
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, James Garfield got shot, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't the initial gun shot that killed him. He lived
Speaker 1: for like, I think weeks afterwards, he got an infection
Speaker 1: in the wound, I think because they were digging around
Speaker 1: with dirty hands to try to get the bullet out
Speaker 1: of him, and he and they didn't have antibiotics of
Speaker 1: course when he got an infection, so he died. I
Speaker 1: think another U s p. It was at William Henry Harrison,
Speaker 1: who I think they think now died from probably like
Speaker 1: drinking fecal contaminated water in the White House. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: many different U UH injuries and infections were just far
Speaker 1: more likely to be lethal with you know, without modern
Speaker 1: antibiotics to step in and UH and EID in the fight. Now,
Speaker 1: there were some things that were kind of like versions
Speaker 1: of antibiotics or antimicrobials from before the discovery of penicillin
Speaker 1: in nine Yeah, the best example from the period just
Speaker 1: immediate immediately prior to pnicillin would be the sulfonamides or
Speaker 1: the sulfa drugs. And these were the first antibacterials to
Speaker 1: be used systematically, and they were synthesized in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two in the German laboratories of bear A g. Now
Speaker 1: you might be thinking about the timeline, Like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: didn't we just say that penicillin was discovered in twenty eight,
Speaker 1: But it took a long time after the discovery of
Speaker 1: penicillin's uh antibacterial properties for it to be made as
Speaker 1: a useful medical tribe Like it was ninety generally that's
Speaker 1: the day you see for when penicillin actually became an
Speaker 1: actionable thing in medicine. Uh So, yeah, before that, we
Speaker 1: had the sulfa drugs and it had they had a
Speaker 1: rocky start, but they did prove very effective in preventing
Speaker 1: wound infections during the Second World War. They were used
Speaker 1: on both sides in the in the form of sulfa
Speaker 1: pills and also sulfa powders that would be sprinkled over
Speaker 1: a wound. So if you've ever watched you know, uh,
Speaker 1: some sort of period piece, so especially a war piece
Speaker 1: from the twentieth century, and you see somebody sprinkling outer
Speaker 1: over an injury, that is what that's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Sulfa drugs. They're not as effective as true antibiotics like
Speaker 1: penicillin um and there are a number of possible side
Speaker 1: effects that one that can take place, and it also
Speaker 1: can't be used to treat syphilis, and it also can't
Speaker 1: treat sulfa resistant infections. Now, of course, this is also
Speaker 1: a twentieth century invention, So I was wondering, did anybody
Speaker 1: come up with any version of antibiotics or proto antibiotics
Speaker 1: before the twentieth century. We know that penicillin hadn't been
Speaker 1: discovered and isolated and made stable as a useful medicine,
Speaker 1: But were there any thing's like antibiotics or sort of
Speaker 1: precursors of antibiotics. Well, because in Game of Thrones, right,
Speaker 1: they have penicillin, don't they? Or they have some sort
Speaker 1: of fantasy version of penicillin. I've never heard of that,
Speaker 1: don't they? They have something that the the the the
Speaker 1: old masters would mention having to do with with bread
Speaker 1: and mold or something, didn't they. I don't remember that.
Speaker 1: I just remember people get cuts and then they get
Speaker 1: infected and die. Give milk of the poppy. I mean,
Speaker 1: they have milk of the poppy that our Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones are are George R. Martin readers will have to
Speaker 1: write in on that, but I vaguely remember there being
Speaker 1: like allusion to something like, uh, some sort of mold
Speaker 1: based uh medicine that they were using. Uh, I could
Speaker 1: be wrong in it. Well, I can't see that being
Speaker 1: something that's thrown in there as a little aside, but
Speaker 1: that like isn't widely recognized or used. Maybe uh. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting how that kind of parallels some interesting pieces
Speaker 1: of evidence for proto antibiotic technology in the real world,
Speaker 1: even going back to ancient times. So I want to
Speaker 1: look at the work of the Emory University bio archaeologist
Speaker 1: George J. R. Meligos, who is now deceased. I think
Speaker 1: he died inteen. But he's interesting, interesting scholar, and he
Speaker 1: discovered something very curious back in nineteen eighty. So the
Speaker 1: subject he was looking at was a set of human
Speaker 1: bones from ancient Nubia, dating from between three fifty and
Speaker 1: five fifty c E. And so the bones came from Nubia,
Speaker 1: which is a region of Africa along the Nile River
Speaker 1: but south of Egypt and what would be modern day Sudan.
Speaker 1: And what these bones showed was evidence that the people
Speaker 1: they belonged to had been taking tetracycline. Now, tetracycline is
Speaker 1: not the same as penicillin, but it is an antibiotic.
Speaker 1: It can be used to treat all kinds of infections,
Speaker 1: from minor problems like acne, I think in concert with
Speaker 1: some other drugs to major diseases like plague or tularemia
Speaker 1: or even syphilis. And Tetracycline works primarily by binding to
Speaker 1: the ribosomes of bacterial cells. Ribosomes are sort of the
Speaker 1: cellular factories. They build proteins that are needed in order
Speaker 1: for organisms to live and grow, and by binding to
Speaker 1: the ribosome, tetracycline makes it difficult for the bacterium to
Speaker 1: create new proteins. It was patented in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and became widely used in the in half of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Uh so what was it doing in the
Speaker 1: bones of Nubian people who live like seventeen hundred years ago. Well,
Speaker 1: our Melagos and colleagues followed archaeological clues to identify the
Speaker 1: source of the tetracycline, which was beer. Ah. Of course
Speaker 1: beer is another one of Ultimately it falls under zugdmoise domain.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, though this is different because tetracycline is not
Speaker 1: made from a fungus. It is actually an antibacterial that
Speaker 1: is a byproduct of some bacteria. Okay, so it's a
Speaker 1: bacterial byproduct, but essentially so technically it's jubilex okay, or
Speaker 1: point to this is jubilex versus jubilex. Right, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean that's going to happen with your demon inter Jubilan warfare.
Speaker 1: Uh So, beer is made from fermented grain, of course,
Speaker 1: and the fermented grain in this ancient Nubian beer apparently
Speaker 1: contained the bacteria stripped to mices, which creates tetracycline as
Speaker 1: a byproduct. But a question of course, so were these
Speaker 1: traces of tetracycling in Nubian mummy bones a sign of
Speaker 1: like a bad batch of beer they got contaminated by accident,
Speaker 1: or were these people deliberately culturing their beer with antibiotic
Speaker 1: producing bacteria and so to look at a study from
Speaker 1: the American Journal of Physical Anthropology from twenty ten, of
Speaker 1: which arm Lagos was one of the authors. The authors
Speaker 1: examine tetracycling in skeletal remains from throughout this period and
Speaker 1: the evidence indicates that the ancient Nubians were consuming these
Speaker 1: antibiotics on a regular basis, and the authors suggests that
Speaker 1: these ancient people were intentionally producing this medicine, and this
Speaker 1: links up with some evidence from other ancient people's nearby,
Speaker 1: such as the Egyptians that sometimes apparently used beer as
Speaker 1: a treatment for conditions like gum disease and other types
Speaker 1: of infections, and the authors even found evidence of a
Speaker 1: four year old child whose skull contained lots of tetracycling
Speaker 1: from this beer, suggesting that the child had been fed
Speaker 1: high doses of this like antibiotic beer, perhaps in an
Speaker 1: attempt to cure an illness, maybe the illness that killed him.
Speaker 1: And so the levels of tetracycline residue found in the
Speaker 1: bones of these mummies is only explicable if they were
Speaker 1: repeatedly consuming this antibiotic in their diet, and there are
Speaker 1: actually other archaeological remains that show evidence of antibiotic use
Speaker 1: in the ancient world. For example, samples taken from the
Speaker 1: fhemera of skeletons from the Dochlay Oasis in Egypt, from
Speaker 1: people who live sometime in the late Roman period also
Speaker 1: showed evidence of the same thing of tetracycline in the diet,
Speaker 1: and this consumption of tetracycline is consistent with other evidence
Speaker 1: showing a relatively low rate of infectious disease in Sudanese
Speaker 1: Nubia during that time period, and a lack of bone
Speaker 1: infections apparent in these remains from the this oasis in Egypt.
Speaker 1: So it really does look like people in ancient Africa
Speaker 1: discovered a somewhat effective form of antibiotic centuries before the
Speaker 1: discovery of penicillin and the isolation and mass production of
Speaker 1: focused anti microbial medicines. Now, to be clear, I think
Speaker 1: like a beer that had tetracycling content from from being
Speaker 1: cultured with bacteria like this probably would not be as
Speaker 1: potent and focused and effective as like the isolated compounds
Speaker 1: in the drugs you'd take orally or through injection would
Speaker 1: be today, but it would have some effect, and it
Speaker 1: appeared that it probably was somewhat effective in fighting infectious disease, right,
Speaker 1: And of course they wouldn't know exactly what they had here,
Speaker 1: but they knew they had some sort of beer that
Speaker 1: seemed to some sort of of holy liquid that that
Speaker 1: that had some sort of curative property to it exactly,
Speaker 1: I mean, a fascinating discovery from the ancient world. Another
Speaker 1: interesting fact, tetracycling is relatively unique in that it leaves
Speaker 1: clear signatures in the bones that can be discovered long
Speaker 1: after the person has died, so other antibiotics don't leave
Speaker 1: these clear markers like this that make it easy for
Speaker 1: archaeologists detect. So you have to wonder, like, are there
Speaker 1: were there other cases of ancient peoples in various places
Speaker 1: and times using some kind of antibiotics or bacterial or
Speaker 1: fungal cultures uh to treat diseases like these ancient Nubian
Speaker 1: people were, but that we don't have evidence of because
Speaker 1: it doesn't show up in the bones like tetracyclin does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could have just been lost to history. I was
Speaker 1: reading an interesting paper from Frontiers in Microbiology in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten by A. Roost dam Aminov called a Brief
Speaker 1: History of the Antibiotic Era, Lessons Learned and Challenges for
Speaker 1: the Future. And Amanov points out this unique quality of
Speaker 1: tetracycline and notes just what I was basically just saying,
Speaker 1: like how easy it would be for evidence of other
Speaker 1: uses of antibiotics in the ancient world to be lost
Speaker 1: to us. Though he he also mentions that there are
Speaker 1: other anecdotes from history about like cultural traditions that show
Speaker 1: proto antibiotic technologies and these other examples would include red
Speaker 1: soil is found in Jordans that are used for treating
Speaker 1: skin infections. It's been discovered that these soils contain some
Speaker 1: antibiotic producing organisms, though I guess there are probably also
Speaker 1: some major risks in applying soil to wounds, and then
Speaker 1: also plants used in traditional Chinese medicine that actually do
Speaker 1: have some antimicrobial properties. Yeah, because one thing we have
Speaker 1: to remember is like the modern antibiotic effort is ultimately
Speaker 1: based in going out into the natural world and finding
Speaker 1: these weapons that already exist and then reusing them and
Speaker 1: adapting them for human medicine. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: essentially what is going on in traditional medicines as well.
Speaker 1: And it also means that there are weapons out there
Speaker 1: that either have not been discovered at all at all,
Speaker 1: especially in particularly vibrant ecosystems, some of which of course
Speaker 1: are threatened. All the more reason to uh for us
Speaker 1: to not decimate say the rain forests or the deep ocean.
Speaker 1: But then there are also things that may have been
Speaker 1: discovered to some degree in the past but have been forgotten. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that does seem possible because despite all all
Speaker 1: this evidence of ancient sort of proto antibiotic technologies. The
Speaker 1: worldwide rates of death from infectious disease in the periods
Speaker 1: for which we have data, right before the invention of
Speaker 1: modern antibiotics shows that humans generally did not have effective
Speaker 1: antimicrobials in that period. So maybe some of this knowledge
Speaker 1: was lost over time. Alright, well, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: going to take our first break. But when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to return to the mold research of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and ultimately to our key inventor here, Alexander Fleming. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back now. We'll get to Alexander Fleming in a
Speaker 1: minute with the discovery of penicillin. But Alexander Fleming was
Speaker 1: not the first person to notice that there might be
Speaker 1: some anti microbial properties of certain fun guy. That's right,
Speaker 1: there was, there was work going on in this area
Speaker 1: prior to Flaming. Flaming was was, you know, picking up
Speaker 1: on some of it, and uh, and really just overall
Speaker 1: just our understanding of a fun guy in general was
Speaker 1: was advancing. As we mentioned in our Psychedelics episodes, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a time where we did not recognize fun
Speaker 1: guy as being separate from the realm of plants before
Speaker 1: we realized that it was a kingdom unto itself and
Speaker 1: almost ultimately a kingdom that has a little more in
Speaker 1: common with the animal Kingdom than it does with the
Speaker 1: plant Kingdom. And uh, there are a lot of talented
Speaker 1: folks working in this area, but one of them, mind
Speaker 1: comes as a surprise to a lot of people. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's because her name was Beatrix Potter. Uh the
Speaker 1: way the bunny rabbit, the bunny rabbits, yes, off the
Speaker 1: bunny rabbit fame. Uh, that was It was kind of
Speaker 1: a curious coincidence because I was reading about all this
Speaker 1: and then just randomly on the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind discussion module, which is the Facebook group for people
Speaker 1: who listen to the show to this ust episodes, someone
Speaker 1: brought up Beatrix's Potter in regards to something to do
Speaker 1: with squirrels, because there's a lot of squirrel uh a
Speaker 1: squirrel content in the discussion module, And yeah, they brought
Speaker 1: up Patrick's Potter. And Beatrix's Potter actually ties into this
Speaker 1: episode a little bit because, in addition to being the
Speaker 1: author and illustrator of the you know, the Tale of
Speaker 1: Peter Rabbit and associated British animal tales, she was also
Speaker 1: a naturalist with a great deal of interest in astronomy
Speaker 1: and most importantly of all, mycology. So she produced a
Speaker 1: lot of just beautiful scientific watercolor illustrations of various fun
Speaker 1: guy uh in her you know neck of the British woods, um,
Speaker 1: and you know, as part of her studies, and she
Speaker 1: studied a lot of local molds as well and did
Speaker 1: illustrations of them. Uh. You know, she's she's ultimately a
Speaker 1: very interesting character. That was you know, Unfortunately she lived
Speaker 1: in a time in which, you know, the sexism of
Speaker 1: the day prevented her from i think reaching the heights
Speaker 1: of in the natural sciences that she would have been
Speaker 1: afforded later on. But and then a lot of her
Speaker 1: work is also just being i think rediscovered and appreciated
Speaker 1: for the first time, you know, in recent decades. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, the next time someone busts out some theatrics potter,
Speaker 1: remember this is not just an individual who wrote some
Speaker 1: fanciful tales and illustrated them like she was also just
Speaker 1: she was out there studying the natural world and uh
Speaker 1: and created in advancing our understanding of a mycology. She
Speaker 1: was sort of looking into the hidden life of nature.
Speaker 1: In multiple ways. Yeah, And you know, and I see
Speaker 1: some sources out that they are like asking the question, Okay,
Speaker 1: was Theatric's potter or she or a true naturalist, a
Speaker 1: true natural scientists over she just a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: an amateur that was just very interested in these things.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, it's kind of a complicated question
Speaker 1: to ask when you consider like the limitations uh in
Speaker 1: the Victorian era for women. But I think undoubtedly she
Speaker 1: she I would side with the fact that she was
Speaker 1: a natural scientist. I mean, she authored or co authored
Speaker 1: one paper if I remember correctly, So I'm gonna give her,
Speaker 1: give her full credit. Was it about a fun guy?
Speaker 1: It was? It was it was a mushroom in particular. Um,
Speaker 1: I forget it was one of those related to the
Speaker 1: rusula mushrooms, but I forget which species. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: basically she was you know, she was kind of up
Speaker 1: up against the patriarchy for the most part. Though. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: is it time to turn to penicillin itself? Yes, let's
Speaker 1: turn to this the key discovery here and our inventor,
Speaker 1: our discoverer, Alexander Fleming. Okay, so who was Alexander Fleming? Okay?
Speaker 1: So Fleming was born in eighteen eighty one died in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five and he was a Scottish biologist, physician,
Speaker 1: microbiologist and pharmacologist. He was the son of a farmer
Speaker 1: and he observed and studied a great deal of death
Speaker 1: from sepsis in World War One. He observed that while
Speaker 1: um anti septics worked well at the surface, a deeper
Speaker 1: wounds sheltered bacteria from the effects of things like sulfa drugs. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you have a kind of superficial wound, you could
Speaker 1: clean it off pretty good and that might help protect
Speaker 1: you from from bacterial infection. But if you have a
Speaker 1: deep wound and say like dirty stuff, bits of soil
Speaker 1: and other you know, just crud gets lodged deep in there,
Speaker 1: you might not be able to clean the wound out
Speaker 1: very well. Right, And that's exactly the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that's gonna get lodged in there, especially with your war
Speaker 1: wounds where there is a you know, a stab or
Speaker 1: you know, or or a deep cut, or a bullet
Speaker 1: entering the body. What makes me think about the when
Speaker 1: we were reading about the idea of Stegosaurus, perhaps weapon
Speaker 1: iz I mean not consciously, but the stegosaurus perhaps uh
Speaker 1: having an adaptation to weaponize infection against its enemies by
Speaker 1: dragging its thagamizer spikes through the dong exactly. Yeah, having
Speaker 1: dirty thagamizer spikes and then when it wacks the t
Speaker 1: rex in the crotch with them, that that gets infected
Speaker 1: later and eliminates a predator from the area. Yeah. And uh,
Speaker 1: the the predators of the day would not have had
Speaker 1: access to antibiotics certainly not or even that beer from
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier. So uh, Fleming was you know,
Speaker 1: devoted himself to research and he uh prior to penicillin,
Speaker 1: he discovered lysozyme and naturally occurring enzyme and mucus and
Speaker 1: other parts of the body then inhibits bacteria. So you know,
Speaker 1: he was already you know, in this this area, you know,
Speaker 1: looking for for new new breakthrough his new discoveries. But
Speaker 1: then his biggest breakthrough of all is this discovery of penicillin.
Speaker 1: And it's truly one of the more amazing invention slash
Speaker 1: discovery moments from history because while he was exactly the
Speaker 1: right person to make the discovery and then deserves all
Speaker 1: the credit he was given, the key moment comes down
Speaker 1: really to pure luck, and we simply don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone else would have made the discovery if he had
Speaker 1: not been there to observe it. Okay, so what happened
Speaker 1: with this discovery? So around like ninety seven or so,
Speaker 1: he had engaged himself in studying um staff Lecock either
Speaker 1: or you know staff, and he had stacks of Petrie
Speaker 1: dishes dish specimens in his lab, which I've seen described
Speaker 1: as being kind of an untidy lab. So you know,
Speaker 1: imagining all these like like Petrie dishes, full staff all
Speaker 1: over the place, notes and so forth. And so the
Speaker 1: key moment comes in September of nine, right, right, So
Speaker 1: he has he has the staff Petrie dishes out and
Speaker 1: then he leaves them for the weekend to go on
Speaker 1: holiday with his family, and he when he comes back,
Speaker 1: he expects to just see how they've progressed, see how
Speaker 1: they've grown, but he finds that they haven't grown. In fact,
Speaker 1: they have died. Something has ravaged his specimens. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: it's this is one of those stories where he gets
Speaker 1: very narrativised. So you do have to wonder if some
Speaker 1: details of it are embellished, how the story may have
Speaker 1: changed over time. But This is the way the story
Speaker 1: has been passed down, and and I think it seems
Speaker 1: to be largely basically true. Uh. The way that I've
Speaker 1: seen the story often told is that he comes in,
Speaker 1: there's a blob of mold growing in one of the plates,
Speaker 1: and all around the mold there's this halo of nothingness where,
Speaker 1: you know, normally what you would see is that if
Speaker 1: you've got a plate for culturing bacteria, there would be
Speaker 1: these dots and blobs on the on the plate, but
Speaker 1: instead there's this halo where there's no bacteria, bacterial dead zone. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we know Staphylococcus is is a bacterium group
Speaker 1: linked to all kinds of human disease and misery. I
Speaker 1: think staff infections. Right, if this mold could kill staff,
Speaker 1: that seems medically relevant. So what happened here? Well, Um
Speaker 1: he realized that he was dealing with some sort of
Speaker 1: a fun guy, you know, so he luckily there was
Speaker 1: a mycologist with a lab just below Fleming on the
Speaker 1: floor below his lab, a man by the name of C. J.
Speaker 1: La Touche. And in fact, it's also been suspected that
Speaker 1: the mold and question that killed Um Fleming's staff might
Speaker 1: have drifted up from Latch's lab, adding an extra element
Speaker 1: of we your chance to this whole situation. Okay, so
Speaker 1: perhaps his samples were contaminated by stuff from the lab
Speaker 1: next door down the floor. That's that's what that's not.
Speaker 1: That's not a theory that's presented in every source, but
Speaker 1: it does pop up fairly frequently. So specifically, this mold
Speaker 1: was what would later be identified as a strain of
Speaker 1: Penicillium notatum, and it was obvious that it secreted something
Speaker 1: that prevented staff bacteria from growing, and so Fleming followed
Speaker 1: up in studying this secretion, this this mold juice as
Speaker 1: I've seen it called uh he. He He found that it
Speaker 1: didn't only prevent the growth of Staphylococcus, it worked against
Speaker 1: common bacteria like Streptococcus or ninja caucus and uh and
Speaker 1: thea also against the bacterium that causes diphtheria. Interestingly, while
Speaker 1: Fleming did see applications for penicillin and curing disease, and
Speaker 1: he mentioned them briefly in the paper he published in
Speaker 1: ninety nine about this discovery about the anti bacterial properties
Speaker 1: of Penicillium uh he primarily thought of this secretion of
Speaker 1: penicillium as a tool for bacteriologists to sort strains of
Speaker 1: bacteria basically into penicillin sensitive versus non penicillin sensitive species,
Speaker 1: and that that that could be useful in the lab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he sometimes criticized is really not understanding completely what
Speaker 1: he had here, not having the vision to see where
Speaker 1: it could go. Well, I don't think he completely understood,
Speaker 1: but he did indicate that this could possibly have uses
Speaker 1: in medicine. Um So Fleming and his assistance Stuart Kratak
Speaker 1: and Frederick Ridley tried for years to turn this accidental
Speaker 1: discovery into a stable, isolated compound that would be useful.
Speaker 1: And this is this was a problem because like so
Speaker 1: you've got this secretion from the mold, it molds, making
Speaker 1: some juice. It's kind of getting stuff wet with this
Speaker 1: this stuff that that that fights bacterial growth. But they
Speaker 1: couldn't isolate the comp hound that was causing the effect
Speaker 1: and stabilize it and make it make it generally useful.
Speaker 1: So to quote from Amanov's paper Amanov that I mentioned earlier, quote,
Speaker 1: for twelve years after his initial observation, Alexander Fleming was
Speaker 1: trying to get chemists interested in resolving persisting problems with
Speaker 1: the purification and stability of the active substance, and supplied
Speaker 1: the penicillium strain to anyone requesting it. But he really
Speaker 1: he could never crack the nut ultimately, and he didn't
Speaker 1: finally make this discovery of the process for for stabilizing
Speaker 1: and isolating the compound. And by Amanov writes that Fleming
Speaker 1: finally abandoned dis quest. But fortunately it was right about
Speaker 1: that time that a capable team at Oxford University, including
Speaker 1: the researchers Howard Floory and Earnst Chain or China, they
Speaker 1: picked up on this research and they they kicked off
Speaker 1: the research project that would eventually break through on this. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they're all these interesting stories. So of course this
Speaker 1: is wild. World War two is going on, so research
Speaker 1: conditions are not ideal. And uh, they're all these stories
Speaker 1: about how they turned their lab at Oxford into this
Speaker 1: giant incubation center or sort of factory for mold. Like
Speaker 1: they employed all these lab assistants who are these women
Speaker 1: who had been referred to in some sources as the
Speaker 1: penicillin girls, and they would work to like to they
Speaker 1: would work to grow the penicillin and buckets and tubs
Speaker 1: and basically every container that they could um and uh,
Speaker 1: eventually they did. They were able to isolate and stabilize
Speaker 1: this compound. So to quote from an article from the
Speaker 1: American Chemical Society, quote in nineteen forty Floory and that
Speaker 1: would be Howard Flory carried out vital experiments showing that
Speaker 1: penicillin could protect mice against infection from deadly strepped to
Speaker 1: cock eye. Then, on February twelve, nineteen forty one, a
Speaker 1: forty three year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first
Speaker 1: recipient of the Oxford penicillin. He'd scratched the side of
Speaker 1: his mouth while pruning roses and had developed a life
Speaker 1: threatening infection with huge abscesses affecting his eyes, face, and lungs.
Speaker 1: Penicillin was injected and within days he made a remarkable recovery.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, despite this recovery, which lasted for a few days,
Speaker 1: they ran out of the drug and Alexander eventually got
Speaker 1: worse again and he died. And I was reading that
Speaker 1: they were so desperate to cure him that after Alexander
Speaker 1: urinated while on his antibiotic course, they would collect the
Speaker 1: urine and try to extract the penicillin he excreted again
Speaker 1: so that it could be re administered to him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I should mention also that the process that the
Speaker 1: Oxford team relied on to extract and purify the penicillin
Speaker 1: in the mold juice was led by another important biochemist,
Speaker 1: a guy named Norman Heatley. But this case of Albert
Speaker 1: Alexander shows an obvious early problem they had, which was
Speaker 1: the problem of ska old. They simply lacked the ability
Speaker 1: to make penicillin at the scale that would be needed
Speaker 1: to treat even one person, let alone the whole world. Uh.
Speaker 1: The strain of mold that they were using didn't make
Speaker 1: enough of it, and this led to the search for
Speaker 1: other species of the same fungal genus Penicillium, which would,
Speaker 1: maybe they thought, produce higher concentrations of the penicillin filter rate.
Speaker 1: And I was reading an interesting article by the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan physician and medical historian Howard Markle that tells
Speaker 1: a really interesting story. I've never heard about this. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the story goes like this. Apparently, one of the
Speaker 1: assistants at the Oxford lab showed up for work one
Speaker 1: day in ninety one with a cantalope that she'd bought
Speaker 1: at the market because it was covered in a weird
Speaker 1: looking golden mold, which is great because this would be
Speaker 1: the one case where somebody is picking over the fresh
Speaker 1: produce produced to like find the MOULDI one, But the
Speaker 1: mold on this cantalope turned out to be a strain
Speaker 1: of penicillium called Penicillium chryso geum, which Marco says naturally
Speaker 1: produced at least about two hundred times as much penicillin
Speaker 1: as the original strain that they've been studying. And then
Speaker 1: later Marco writes that the same strain was subjected to
Speaker 1: mutagenic processes in the labs, like bombarding it with X
Speaker 1: rays and stuff, to produce a mutated strain that would
Speaker 1: make up to a thousand times as much penicillin as
Speaker 1: the old school fleming mold. So by penicillin is on
Speaker 1: its way to becoming a viable medicine. All right. On
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna look at the impact
Speaker 1: of penicillin, and we're gonna look at it, and I
Speaker 1: think a fun way by considering a really interesting what
Speaker 1: if alright, we're back. So we often don't don't do
Speaker 1: a lot of what IF's on invention. I thought we
Speaker 1: we kind of do. It's a certain extent, but I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of times it's a harder case be
Speaker 1: made for, like what if this had not been invention
Speaker 1: invented right bit or discovered because in most cases you
Speaker 1: can you can you can look at the data, you
Speaker 1: can look at other individuals work, Like if the Right
Speaker 1: brothers had not invented the airplane, uh, had not you know,
Speaker 1: created that that first prototype that really showed what was possible. Like,
Speaker 1: clearly there were there were other individuals in the world
Speaker 1: working on this. Someone would have cracked it. If if
Speaker 1: Runkin had not discovered X rays in eighteen ninety whatever
Speaker 1: year it was, somebody else would have discovered them pretty soon. Right,
Speaker 1: But when it comes to penicillin, uh, it potentially gets
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that. I ran across a
Speaker 1: cool article on the topic titled what if Fleming had
Speaker 1: not discovered penicillin? And this was published in the Saudi
Speaker 1: Journal Um of Biological Sciences by al Harvey at All.
Speaker 1: The authors admit that that certainly, if Fleming hadn't made
Speaker 1: the discovery someone else might have in the years to follow,
Speaker 1: probably you know, in the early nineteen forties. They they estimate,
Speaker 1: so we could still well have it have arrived in
Speaker 1: the antibacterial age. However, they also explore the possibility that
Speaker 1: we might have simply not made the discovery at all,
Speaker 1: and it's an interesting argument. So I want to read
Speaker 1: a quote from the paper here. Quote. Of course, penicillin
Speaker 1: could have been discovered the day after Fleming missed the opportunity,
Speaker 1: but in reality, there was no parallel discovery that took place.
Speaker 1: As a result, anyone taking an interest in penicillin during
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties did so in the knowledge of Fleming's work.
Speaker 1: In particular, there seems no reason to believe that Flory
Speaker 1: and Chain would have discovered penicillin, since their work depended
Speaker 1: on Fleming's famous paper and their access to one of
Speaker 1: his penicillin producing cultures. Okay, so that's referring to the
Speaker 1: thing I mentioned about how how Fleming and his assistance
Speaker 1: were just like sharing the penicillium straining out with everybody, like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you figure out what's going on with this? Can
Speaker 1: you isolate the secretion or the compound in the secretion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so to think about that there was there was
Speaker 1: so far as these researchers could determine, you know, no
Speaker 1: other effort out there that would have struck paydir. In
Speaker 1: the absence of Fleming's research, the Oxford group wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been looking for it. Selman Waksman, the father of modern
Speaker 1: antibiotics is he sometimes called, who made several key discoveries later,
Speaker 1: was also inspired by Fleming. So it's it's one of
Speaker 1: these cases where like he seems to be the epicenter uh,
Speaker 1: well not not only him, but just then the the
Speaker 1: the the seemingly chance encounter h in his lab that
Speaker 1: day that that where suddenly this halo appears in the
Speaker 1: petri dish, and that gives birth to a to a
Speaker 1: whole class of other discoveries. Right, because not all UH
Speaker 1: antibiotics are derived from penicillin, the penicillin class of antibiotics
Speaker 1: becomes sort of like one sort of grandfather class. But
Speaker 1: then there are all these other classes that are discovered
Speaker 1: during this golden age of antibiotics that takes place over
Speaker 1: the next few decades. Yeah, and they're very just additional
Speaker 1: medical breakthroughs that would not have occurred without penicillin, such
Speaker 1: as organ transplant. But then there's also the question like
Speaker 1: what would have what would have happened in the wider world,
Speaker 1: because again, penicillin comes online during the Second World War,
Speaker 1: and so that you can easily ask, well, what would
Speaker 1: have happened if Allied troops had not benefited from access
Speaker 1: to antibiotics that D Day? I've never thought about that.
Speaker 1: In fact, before looking at this episode, I probably would
Speaker 1: not have known the answer to whether or not they
Speaker 1: had access to antibiotics. Well, penicillin production was actually swiftly
Speaker 1: scaled up just to make sure that Allied soldiers had
Speaker 1: access to it at D Day. UM, So there's a
Speaker 1: legitimate question to be asked, might the Allies not have
Speaker 1: won the Second World War without penicillin? Um? I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of factors to consider there. I
Speaker 1: don't think that it's quite a gotcha question, but it's
Speaker 1: it's worth thinking about. The authors argue that without Fleming's discovery,
Speaker 1: we would have had to do and on the sulfa drugs, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an imperfect alternative to true antibiotics, and these
Speaker 1: uh you know, these were described in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: and Fleming worked with him prior to his discovery, but
Speaker 1: without penicillin in play, the authors argue that sulfa drugs
Speaker 1: might have become the standard and even pushed the discovery
Speaker 1: of true um antibiotics well beyond the nineteen sixties. And
Speaker 1: this is also true of the Access Powers had risen
Speaker 1: in victorious in World War Two, because the Access Powers
Speaker 1: depended on sulfa drugs as their their key treatment. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, they do point point out that, you know, quote,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the Germans and their allies were
Speaker 1: at a considerable disadvantage, Uh, the sulfa drugs did a
Speaker 1: relatively good job at reducing battle casualties. So not to
Speaker 1: just completely um, you know, cast aside the effectiveness of
Speaker 1: sulfa drugs, but still they were not as effective as
Speaker 1: true antibiotics. It's weird to think about the political implications
Speaker 1: of specific medical technologies. Yeah, and then when you get
Speaker 1: down to the curious cases of individuals, it also gets interesting.
Speaker 1: We already touched on presidents who died that would have
Speaker 1: lived potentially if there had been penicillin around. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so they point out that that SOFA drugs saved Churchill's
Speaker 1: life in ninety three when he was suffering from pneumonia
Speaker 1: as well as FDR's life. But there's also evidence by
Speaker 1: the way that actual penicillin may have saved Hitler's life.
Speaker 1: Following the Staffenberg assassination attempt of July nine, this was
Speaker 1: the plot that tried to kill Hitler with a briefcase bomb,
Speaker 1: like where some of the officers conspired against him and
Speaker 1: they put a briefcase bomb in the room with him,
Speaker 1: and it did explode, but he was protected by like
Speaker 1: a heavy table that prevented it from killing him. He
Speaker 1: was obviously injured, and I think he had like nerve
Speaker 1: damage after that. So the idea here is that perhaps
Speaker 1: his injuries were treated by by penicillan. Yeah, that's at
Speaker 1: least an argument has been made that they had access
Speaker 1: to penicillin. I'm unclear on how they would have obtained it,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure maybe there's a spy story there.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the idea being, well, if he
Speaker 1: had if he had didn't have access to penicillin, then
Speaker 1: perhaps he would have died, and that would have arguably
Speaker 1: ended the war, you know, in a different manner, forcing
Speaker 1: us to reimagine an entirely different post war world. So
Speaker 1: again we're playing with with what EFF's here and and
Speaker 1: also we in my understanding is we don't know for
Speaker 1: sure that Hitler had access to penicillin following that assassination attempt,
Speaker 1: but there is the overall scenario of the Allies having
Speaker 1: penicillin and having this ramped up penicillin production leading into
Speaker 1: D Day. Yeah, that is really interesting. I had never
Speaker 1: contemplated that before. Um Now, something that I we do
Speaker 1: often have to think about and we should probably acknowledge
Speaker 1: at the end here before we move on. Maybe this
Speaker 1: will be something to come back and UH do in
Speaker 1: the future with a recent invention episode is the idea
Speaker 1: of a possible end of the antibiotics age. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a kind of scary thing to imagine, Like
Speaker 1: what if the antibiot next age is essentially a period
Speaker 1: in history that has a beginning and an end. Because
Speaker 1: as we you've you've probably heard about this, many disease
Speaker 1: causing bacteria and other disease causing microbes are over time
Speaker 1: evolving antibiotic resistance are evolving to to be powerful enough
Speaker 1: to survive our antimicrobial drugs. And I think specifically one
Speaker 1: thing that's exacerbating this is overuse of antibiotics and people
Speaker 1: not taking the entire course of antibiotics when they're given them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because again, to come back to the Zagdamoy jubile X
Speaker 1: war scenario, you know, it is an ongoing battle and
Speaker 1: the forces evolve, uh to uh to better deal with
Speaker 1: the threats on each side. And so you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're we're we're seeing this occur. We're seeing the overuse
Speaker 1: of antibiotics producing uh, you know, strains that are that
Speaker 1: are resistant, and it's reversing some of the therapeutic miracles
Speaker 1: of the last fifty years, and and underscores the importance
Speaker 1: of disease prevention in addition to treatment, and that means
Speaker 1: not not abandoning some of our other vital tools for
Speaker 1: human health like vaccination. Oh yeah, we should come back
Speaker 1: and revisit vaccinations or maybe even various different vaccinations in
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah. Another thing to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned earlier was that the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties through the nineteen seventies are are considered like the
Speaker 1: golden age of antibiotic research, and we haven't seen at
Speaker 1: least if we haven't seen any new classes of antibiotics
Speaker 1: emerged since that time period right now, there have been
Speaker 1: new developments in antibiotics, but I think the way I've
Speaker 1: read it is that they're generally modifications on existing classes
Speaker 1: of antibiotics, sort of like we we haven't. We haven't
Speaker 1: found anything radically new since then. Basically, we reached out
Speaker 1: into the natural war between between fungi and the microbial legions,
Speaker 1: and we we stole some of the tools, We stole
Speaker 1: some of that Promethean fire when we we keep adapting
Speaker 1: that fire to our own purposes, but we haven't. We
Speaker 1: haven't found any new weapon from that world. And uh,
Speaker 1: and then their ongoing war continues to change. I'd be interested.
Speaker 1: Do you out there, you the listener, do you work
Speaker 1: in medical research? Are you working on areas involved in
Speaker 1: antibiotic resistance? The future of anti microbials? I please get
Speaker 1: in touch with us. I would like to hear about that.
Speaker 1: What what are you doing in your work and what
Speaker 1: does the future look like to you on the inside. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we would we would love to hear from you. Again,
Speaker 1: we've only really scratched the surface here though thanks to antibiotics,
Speaker 1: hopefully that scratch will not uh get interested life threatening infection.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's a lot more history here, but but
Speaker 1: hopefully what we've done here today is of course highlight
Speaker 1: just a very very cool story from the history of
Speaker 1: inventions and discoveries and human history and outlined the impact
Speaker 1: of of one of the greatest inventions or discoveries. Again,
Speaker 1: however you want to classify it from the toy a century, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Invention, you can check out our homepage. It's
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Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Maya Cole.
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Speaker 1: let us know feedback on this episode or any other,
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