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