WEBVTT - Invention Playlist 4: Penicillin 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:08.959 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:11.799 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:11.880 --> 0:00:14.240 Joe McCormick and Robert. I know you want to talk 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:18.360 about D and D before we get to the real subject. Well, 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:21.680 I don't know, I was thinking about doing it last. 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.920 We can go ahead and talk about it up front. Um. Yeah, Well, 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:28.000 in Dungeons and Dragons, Uh, you have all these various 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:31.840 demon lords. Uh and uh, they they rule over various 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.360 sort of portions of the of of the fiend population 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:38.360 in the game. And there are two demon lords in 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:42.080 particular that I was thinking about in regards to today's episode. Uh, 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:45.240 and that that would be zug Boy and jubile X. 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:50.480 So zug Boy is the the demon Lord of fun Guy, 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:54.040 the Queen of fun Guy, the master of Decay, and 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:59.200 then opposing her, Um Everett odds with her is jubile X, 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:01.880 the Faceless Lord, which is a god of uzas and 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.800 slimes and blobs, you know, all the the using nasty 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.000 creatures of Dungeons and Dragons. And yeah, they're they oppose 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.480 each other. They're constant war with each other and in 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:16.160 some campaigns like their forces and even there they're you know, 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:20.200 embodied forms do battle with one another, and it actually 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:22.479 ties in a bit with the subject we're talking about 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:27.920 today of penicillin. Okay, so penicillin the fungus that fights 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.880 I don't know, would you call diseases slimes? Well, I 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.759 feel like jubile X being the demon lord of uzes 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:38.240 and slimes kind of makes it the demon lord of 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.280 of microbiology as well, and you know, microves and uh 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:46.480 and microbial illnesses. So okay, Well, so today we're going 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:49.280 to be talking about penicillin. I guess maybe one of 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:53.480 the great real weapons of zug Tamoi. But this this 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:56.840 came up, I think because we've been talking about fungus 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:58.920 on our other podcasts on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:03.160 where we just finished recording a five part series on psychedelics. 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.120 Yeah yeah, looking at fungal psychedelics and ongoing research into 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:09.400 how these substances could enhance our mental well being and 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.120 helping the treatment of the psychological issues. And one of 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.119 our big take homes was that these fungi could help 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.040 save lives and improve the quality of human life. But 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:20.000 it would not be the first or only fung gui 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:22.960 to do so, because we can certainly look to various 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.959 interactions between human hell the different fungi species and their use, 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:31.240 and traditional medicine. We can point to various products including 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.160 you know, products of fermentation, for instance, including alcohol. But 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:39.320 there's an even better example of better living through fungi, 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.240 and that's penicillin. Right, So today we're going to briefly 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:45.280 explore the invention of penicillin, which is often cited as 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:50.560 the first true antibiotic technology. Of course, antibiotics or medications 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:54.680 that treat infections by killing, injuring, or slowing the growth 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:58.120 of bacteria in the body, and antibiotics are a class 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:02.320 of what you would generally call antimicrobial drugs, medicines that 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:05.800 kill microbes that present a threat to the body. Of course, 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.440 an antibiotics generally fight bacterial infections, whereas you could have 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.960 others like anti fungals that fight fungal infections or anti 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:17.960 virals that fight viral infections. Now, antimicrobials and antibiotics are 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:21.000 a gigantic subject area that we're of course not going 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:22.920 to be able to get into every nook and cranny 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.200 of the subject, but we hope we could have an 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:30.040 interesting introductory introductory discussion, maybe come back to antibiotics sometime 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:32.960 again in the future, because it's a it's a broad 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:38.000 invention that has lots of little invention tributaries throughout history. Yeah, 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:40.080 but it is such a fascinating case to look at, 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:41.640 and I think should make for a great episode of 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:45.120 invention here because for starters, it's it's a twentieth century 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.640 invention slash discovery. Often, of course, the line between invision 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:52.480 and discovery is a little bit gray, but we can, Yeah, 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:57.560 we can pinpoint it and ultimately like rolled out by 0:03:57.640 --> 0:03:59.920 or so, but that we can, we can look to it. 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:01.880 We can look at the world before, and we can 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:03.440 look at the world after with it with the sort 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:06.960 of clarity that we don't always have with certainly older 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.240 or more ancient inventions. Exactly because we always like to 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:13.000 ask the question on this show, what came before the invention? 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.719 What what changed when this invention came on the scene. Uh, 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:21.960 And what came before widespread modern antibiotics was stupendous amounts 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:25.400 of death and misery from infectious disease in blood poisoning. 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.120 I was wondering, like, is it even possible to to 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.000 get stats on what the world of infectious disease looked 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:37.400 like before we had antibiotics around the mid twentieth century. Yeah, 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:39.200 I mean, to a certain extent, a lot of the 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.880 suffering is just incalculable, um, you know, especially if you 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.359 go back and sort of consider all of human history 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.240 up to that point and the various factors that that 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:53.359 influenced infectious disease and injury, you know, the eventually the 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.000 rise of germ theory, but also the things like they 0:04:56.120 --> 0:05:00.280 the rise of cities and so forth. But but LUCKI yea, 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.680 since it was such a recent invention, we have some 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.520 pretty incredible stats on the matter. Um, you know, suddenly 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.200 thinks to this new miracle drug, diseases that had simply 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:13.919 ravaged the global population, like syphilis, could be cured. The 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.080 shadow of lethal infection no longer hung, at least as 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:21.320 heavily over every scrape, injury and war wound and with 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.760 wounds were often talking about sepsis, which is a term 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.520 that was used by Hippocrates back in the fourth century 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.400 b c. Meaning blood rod or blood poisoning, and he 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.359 was referring more generally, I think, to decay, but the 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:38.680 term came to be applied to blood poisoning, which arises 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.880 when the body's response to infection causes causes injury to 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.919 its own tissue and organs. But just prior to the 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:50.120 twentieth century, infectious diseases accounted for high morbidity and mortality 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.679 rates around the world, even in the industrialized world. According 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.440 to W. A. Adgy in the Treasure called Antibiotics, from 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.680 two thousand sixteen, the average life expectancy at birth was 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:05.160 forty seven years, forty six and forty eight years from 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:07.560 men and women, respectively, and this was due to the 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:16.600 dangers of smallpox, uh cholera, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid fever, plague, tuberculosis, typhus, syphilis, 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:19.039 and a host of other ailments that could afflict you. 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.320 And then during the antibiotic era that follow again you know, 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.400 arising in the middle of the twenty century, the leading 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.400 cause of death in the United States changed from communicable 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:35.120 diseases to non communicable diseases like cardio cardiovascular disease, cancer, 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:38.599 and stroke, and the average life ex expectancy at birth 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.600 rose to seventy eight point eight years, so the elderly 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.200 were no longer a mere four percent of the population, 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.240 but grow to become a whopping percent of the population. 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:50.960 So you know, we're talking about you know, profound changes 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:56.000 just to demographics based on this new uh, this new invention. Yeah, 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:57.840 the change is huge. I mean, we live in a 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:01.320 world now where if you have access to high quality 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:03.160 modern medicine, and a lot of people don't, I mean 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.640 that's something mind. But if you have access to high quality, 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:10.400 modern science based medicine and you can get antibiotics and uh, 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.239 and you can get to a hospital or see a doctor, 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.840 you very likely have a good chance to beat most 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.760 of the common infectious diseases that people get unless you 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:22.840 have some kind of you know, like another condition that 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:26.760 exacerbates it or something. Before antibiotics, this was just not 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:30.680 that people just died from diseases that you catch, like 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.480 diseases that are common for people to catch all the time. Yeah, 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:39.080 Or you had certain diseases like syphilis that were virtually uncurable, 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.280 you know, and and some of the the cures that 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:45.320 were attempted were pretty horrendous, you know, and and and 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.040 had and and generally did not work, you know, talking 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.480 about like using mercury and so forth. And you mentioned 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:53.960 before contamination of wounds. I mean, this is just a 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:56.720 huge thing, just like you know, you might, uh, you 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.240 might cut yourself while gardening and you die from it. Yeah, 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:04.360 and Heaven forbid you undergo say medieval gall stone surgery 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:09.160 or something like that. By the way, I think tuberculosis 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.680 has a you know, is a good example to look 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:13.640 at for some of these stats as well. According to 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:16.600 the c d C, t B was a leading cause 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.440 of death in the US in nineteen forty prior to 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:23.200 the rollout of antibiotic therapy in nineteen hundred, a hundred 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:26.520 and ninety four of every hundred thousand US residents died 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.360 from the t B. Uh. Most were residents of urban areas. 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.360 In nineteen hundred, the three leading causes of death in 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:39.760 the US word pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhea and uh enteritis, 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:43.439 which together with diphtheria, caused one third of all deaths, 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.800 and of these deaths, forty percent were among children aged 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.760 less than five years old. Now, to your point, and 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:55.920 not everybody has the access to antibiotics that say people 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.640 enjoy and say Europe in the United States, Um, Yeah. 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:02.959 T remains a leading cause of death from an infectious 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:05.840 disease in many parts of the world, particularly the developing world, 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:10.200 and some antibiotic treatments or antibiotic assisted treatments are more 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:12.640 complicated and more difficult than others. I mean, I know 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.160 the treatment for TB is not as say, easy as 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.240 the round of just orally administered antibiotics that you might 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.680 get for a standard bacterial infection. Right but it's suddenly 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:26.440 it was just a heralded rightfully so is as a 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.440 miracle invention. When it came about you, I saw an 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.360 image of of a sign I think a garbage can 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:36.320 ra a mailbox from the mid twentieth century, advertising that 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.679 now you can get gonna recured in in uh like 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:43.640 four hours thanks to the you know, these new developments 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.520 in antibiotics. You know, it's just a it can be 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.280 difficult to put ourselves in that mindset, having grown up 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:53.040 in the wake of antihiblotics, or at least most of us, 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:55.520 most people listening to this show. I was just thinking 0:09:55.559 --> 0:10:00.120 about how many like US presidents died of infections of 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.280 various kinds. Uh that that that seems like that would 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:05.560 be a very unusual thing to happen now, But like 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.880 in the eighteen hundreds, James Garfield got shot, but it 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.000 wasn't the initial gun shot that killed him. He lived 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:14.600 for like, I think weeks afterwards, he got an infection 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:16.920 in the wound, I think because they were digging around 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.360 with dirty hands to try to get the bullet out 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.320 of him, and he and they didn't have antibiotics of 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:24.840 course when he got an infection, so he died. I 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.680 think another U s p. It was at William Henry Harrison, 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.640 who I think they think now died from probably like 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:34.360 drinking fecal contaminated water in the White House. Yeah, so 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:38.760 many different U UH injuries and infections were just far 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:41.839 more likely to be lethal with you know, without modern 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:46.040 antibiotics to step in and UH and EID in the fight. Now, 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.800 there were some things that were kind of like versions 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:53.600 of antibiotics or antimicrobials from before the discovery of penicillin 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:57.640 in nine Yeah, the best example from the period just 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:01.959 immediate immediately prior to pnicillin would be the sulfonamides or 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.959 the sulfa drugs. And these were the first antibacterials to 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:10.000 be used systematically, and they were synthesized in nineteen thirty 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.480 two in the German laboratories of bear A g. Now 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.560 you might be thinking about the timeline, Like, wait a minute, 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.320 didn't we just say that penicillin was discovered in twenty eight, 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.040 But it took a long time after the discovery of 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:25.480 penicillin's uh antibacterial properties for it to be made as 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.640 a useful medical tribe Like it was ninety generally that's 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.319 the day you see for when penicillin actually became an 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:36.400 actionable thing in medicine. Uh So, yeah, before that, we 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:39.480 had the sulfa drugs and it had they had a 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.160 rocky start, but they did prove very effective in preventing 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:44.839 wound infections during the Second World War. They were used 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:47.400 on both sides in the in the form of sulfa 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:51.400 pills and also sulfa powders that would be sprinkled over 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:54.720 a wound. So if you've ever watched you know, uh, 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.600 some sort of period piece, so especially a war piece 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:00.200 from the twentieth century, and you see somebody sprinkling outer 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:02.920 over an injury, that is what that's supposed to be. 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:06.480 Sulfa drugs. They're not as effective as true antibiotics like 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.000 penicillin um and there are a number of possible side 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.240 effects that one that can take place, and it also 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.440 can't be used to treat syphilis, and it also can't 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:20.760 treat sulfa resistant infections. Now, of course, this is also 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:24.720 a twentieth century invention, So I was wondering, did anybody 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:28.520 come up with any version of antibiotics or proto antibiotics 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.680 before the twentieth century. We know that penicillin hadn't been 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:36.840 discovered and isolated and made stable as a useful medicine, 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.280 But were there any thing's like antibiotics or sort of 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.400 precursors of antibiotics. Well, because in Game of Thrones, right, 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:45.680 they have penicillin, don't they? Or they have some sort 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:47.880 of fantasy version of penicillin. I've never heard of that, 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:51.000 don't they? They have something that the the the the 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:54.240 old masters would mention having to do with with bread 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:56.640 and mold or something, didn't they. I don't remember that. 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:58.800 I just remember people get cuts and then they get 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:01.240 infected and die. Give milk of the poppy. I mean, 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.439 they have milk of the poppy that our Game of 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.840 Thrones are are George R. Martin readers will have to 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:09.959 write in on that, but I vaguely remember there being 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.560 like allusion to something like, uh, some sort of mold 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:18.840 based uh medicine that they were using. Uh, I could 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.040 be wrong in it. Well, I can't see that being 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.680 something that's thrown in there as a little aside, but 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:27.400 that like isn't widely recognized or used. Maybe uh. And 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:31.840 it's interesting how that kind of parallels some interesting pieces 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.080 of evidence for proto antibiotic technology in the real world, 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:38.840 even going back to ancient times. So I want to 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:42.760 look at the work of the Emory University bio archaeologist 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.959 George J. R. Meligos, who is now deceased. I think 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:50.880 he died inteen. But he's interesting, interesting scholar, and he 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:55.360 discovered something very curious back in nineteen eighty. So the 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.240 subject he was looking at was a set of human 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:03.120 bones from ancient Nubia, dating from between three fifty and 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:07.040 five fifty c E. And so the bones came from Nubia, 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.120 which is a region of Africa along the Nile River 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.120 but south of Egypt and what would be modern day Sudan. 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.800 And what these bones showed was evidence that the people 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:23.040 they belonged to had been taking tetracycline. Now, tetracycline is 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:25.880 not the same as penicillin, but it is an antibiotic. 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.600 It can be used to treat all kinds of infections, 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:31.440 from minor problems like acne, I think in concert with 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.560 some other drugs to major diseases like plague or tularemia 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:40.160 or even syphilis. And Tetracycline works primarily by binding to 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.760 the ribosomes of bacterial cells. Ribosomes are sort of the 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.920 cellular factories. They build proteins that are needed in order 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.920 for organisms to live and grow, and by binding to 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:54.360 the ribosome, tetracycline makes it difficult for the bacterium to 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:58.360 create new proteins. It was patented in the nineteen fifties 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.520 and became widely used in the in half of the 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.280 twentieth century. Uh so what was it doing in the 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:08.240 bones of Nubian people who live like seventeen hundred years ago. Well, 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:12.840 our Melagos and colleagues followed archaeological clues to identify the 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.600 source of the tetracycline, which was beer. Ah. Of course 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:20.960 beer is another one of Ultimately it falls under zugdmoise domain. 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.120 Oh yeah, though this is different because tetracycline is not 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.880 made from a fungus. It is actually an antibacterial that 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.480 is a byproduct of some bacteria. Okay, so it's a 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:36.920 bacterial byproduct, but essentially so technically it's jubilex okay, or 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:40.720 point to this is jubilex versus jubilex. Right, Well, I 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:43.880 mean that's going to happen with your demon inter Jubilan warfare. 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.560 Uh So, beer is made from fermented grain, of course, 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:52.240 and the fermented grain in this ancient Nubian beer apparently 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:57.040 contained the bacteria stripped to mices, which creates tetracycline as 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.800 a byproduct. But a question of course, so were these 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:05.360 traces of tetracycling in Nubian mummy bones a sign of 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.000 like a bad batch of beer they got contaminated by accident, 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:13.160 or were these people deliberately culturing their beer with antibiotic 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:16.320 producing bacteria and so to look at a study from 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.440 the American Journal of Physical Anthropology from twenty ten, of 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:22.960 which arm Lagos was one of the authors. The authors 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:27.320 examine tetracycling in skeletal remains from throughout this period and 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:31.040 the evidence indicates that the ancient Nubians were consuming these 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:34.440 antibiotics on a regular basis, and the authors suggests that 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:38.880 these ancient people were intentionally producing this medicine, and this 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.280 links up with some evidence from other ancient people's nearby, 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:46.320 such as the Egyptians that sometimes apparently used beer as 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.400 a treatment for conditions like gum disease and other types 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.480 of infections, and the authors even found evidence of a 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:57.320 four year old child whose skull contained lots of tetracycling 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.560 from this beer, suggesting that the child had been fed 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:04.280 high doses of this like antibiotic beer, perhaps in an 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:07.800 attempt to cure an illness, maybe the illness that killed him. 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.080 And so the levels of tetracycline residue found in the 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.920 bones of these mummies is only explicable if they were 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:18.040 repeatedly consuming this antibiotic in their diet, and there are 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:21.679 actually other archaeological remains that show evidence of antibiotic use 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:24.919 in the ancient world. For example, samples taken from the 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:29.600 fhemera of skeletons from the Dochlay Oasis in Egypt, from 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:32.760 people who live sometime in the late Roman period also 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.919 showed evidence of the same thing of tetracycline in the diet, 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:40.720 and this consumption of tetracycline is consistent with other evidence 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.919 showing a relatively low rate of infectious disease in Sudanese 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.399 Nubia during that time period, and a lack of bone 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.240 infections apparent in these remains from the this oasis in Egypt. 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:56.520 So it really does look like people in ancient Africa 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:01.480 discovered a somewhat effective form of antibiotic centuries before the 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.679 discovery of penicillin and the isolation and mass production of 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.400 focused anti microbial medicines. Now, to be clear, I think 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:12.560 like a beer that had tetracycling content from from being 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:15.120 cultured with bacteria like this probably would not be as 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:19.320 potent and focused and effective as like the isolated compounds 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:22.200 in the drugs you'd take orally or through injection would 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:24.720 be today, but it would have some effect, and it 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:29.159 appeared that it probably was somewhat effective in fighting infectious disease, right, 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:31.760 And of course they wouldn't know exactly what they had here, 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.439 but they knew they had some sort of beer that 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:38.400 seemed to some sort of of holy liquid that that 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:40.800 that had some sort of curative property to it exactly, 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:44.199 I mean, a fascinating discovery from the ancient world. Another 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:49.000 interesting fact, tetracycling is relatively unique in that it leaves 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:52.600 clear signatures in the bones that can be discovered long 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.640 after the person has died, so other antibiotics don't leave 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.080 these clear markers like this that make it easy for 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:03.760 archaeologists detect. So you have to wonder, like, are there 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:08.080 were there other cases of ancient peoples in various places 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:11.800 and times using some kind of antibiotics or bacterial or 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:16.119 fungal cultures uh to treat diseases like these ancient Nubian 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:20.160 people were, but that we don't have evidence of because 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.160 it doesn't show up in the bones like tetracyclin does. Yeah, 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:25.600 it could have just been lost to history. I was 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:29.560 reading an interesting paper from Frontiers in Microbiology in two 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.720 thousand ten by A. Roost dam Aminov called a Brief 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.040 History of the Antibiotic Era, Lessons Learned and Challenges for 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.480 the Future. And Amanov points out this unique quality of 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:43.200 tetracycline and notes just what I was basically just saying, 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:45.240 like how easy it would be for evidence of other 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:47.639 uses of antibiotics in the ancient world to be lost 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:50.800 to us. Though he he also mentions that there are 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.840 other anecdotes from history about like cultural traditions that show 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:59.399 proto antibiotic technologies and these other examples would include red 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.440 soil is found in Jordans that are used for treating 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:06.360 skin infections. It's been discovered that these soils contain some 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.680 antibiotic producing organisms, though I guess there are probably also 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.600 some major risks in applying soil to wounds, and then 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:17.119 also plants used in traditional Chinese medicine that actually do 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:20.119 have some antimicrobial properties. Yeah, because one thing we have 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:24.359 to remember is like the modern antibiotic effort is ultimately 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:27.720 based in going out into the natural world and finding 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:32.639 these weapons that already exist and then reusing them and 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:37.359 adapting them for human medicine. And you know, this is 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:40.280 essentially what is going on in traditional medicines as well. 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:42.200 And it also means that there are weapons out there 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:44.960 that either have not been discovered at all at all, 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:49.080 especially in particularly vibrant ecosystems, some of which of course 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:52.360 are threatened. All the more reason to uh for us 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:56.320 to not decimate say the rain forests or the deep ocean. 0:20:57.760 --> 0:20:59.560 But then there are also things that may have been 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.440 discovered to some degree in the past but have been forgotten. Well. Yeah, 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:06.480 and that that does seem possible because despite all all 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:11.679 this evidence of ancient sort of proto antibiotic technologies. The 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:15.160 worldwide rates of death from infectious disease in the periods 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.679 for which we have data, right before the invention of 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:22.119 modern antibiotics shows that humans generally did not have effective 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:25.879 antimicrobials in that period. So maybe some of this knowledge 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.840 was lost over time. Alright, well, on that note, we're 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:30.800 going to take our first break. But when we come back, 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.200 we're going to return to the mold research of the 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:47.720 nineteenth century and ultimately to our key inventor here, Alexander Fleming. Alright, 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:50.600 we're back now. We'll get to Alexander Fleming in a 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:54.879 minute with the discovery of penicillin. But Alexander Fleming was 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:57.919 not the first person to notice that there might be 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:01.960 some anti microbial properties of certain fun guy. That's right, 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.200 there was, there was work going on in this area 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:07.280 prior to Flaming. Flaming was was, you know, picking up 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:10.320 on some of it, and uh, and really just overall 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:13.920 just our understanding of a fun guy in general was 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:17.399 was advancing. As we mentioned in our Psychedelics episodes, you know, 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:20.000 there was a time where we did not recognize fun 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:23.560 guy as being separate from the realm of plants before 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:25.800 we realized that it was a kingdom unto itself and 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:28.480 almost ultimately a kingdom that has a little more in 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.040 common with the animal Kingdom than it does with the 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:34.840 plant Kingdom. And uh, there are a lot of talented 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:38.120 folks working in this area, but one of them, mind 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:40.080 comes as a surprise to a lot of people. Um, 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:44.040 and that's because her name was Beatrix Potter. Uh the 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:47.320 way the bunny rabbit, the bunny rabbits, yes, off the 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.879 bunny rabbit fame. Uh, that was It was kind of 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:53.080 a curious coincidence because I was reading about all this 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:55.800 and then just randomly on the Stuff to Blow your 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:58.600 Mind discussion module, which is the Facebook group for people 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.160 who listen to the show to this ust episodes, someone 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.760 brought up Beatrix's Potter in regards to something to do 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:07.879 with squirrels, because there's a lot of squirrel uh a 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:11.320 squirrel content in the discussion module, And yeah, they brought 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:14.159 up Patrick's Potter. And Beatrix's Potter actually ties into this 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:17.359 episode a little bit because, in addition to being the 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:19.439 author and illustrator of the you know, the Tale of 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:23.400 Peter Rabbit and associated British animal tales, she was also 0:23:23.440 --> 0:23:26.520 a naturalist with a great deal of interest in astronomy 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:30.000