3.7.2: Antibiotics
Microorganisms that have antimicrobial powers have been used since ancient times, everywhere from Greece to China. However, antibiotics were not officially “discovered” until the early 20th century. Paul Ehrlich, a German doctor, is credited with first discovering an antibiotic to treat syphilis, and Andrew Fleming stumbled upon penicillin while haphazardly allowing mold to grow in his staphylococcus research. In the late 1930s, Selman Waksman studied microbes as the producers or antimicrobial agents, which led to the development of two treatment methods for tuberculosis which ushered in the “Golden Age” of antibiotic discovery. During the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, antibiotics were discovered and developed for many different bacterial infections, from a variety of natural products as well as synthetic sources. However, the overuse of antibiotics and mutations of pathogens has led to multi-drug resistant diseases, which are a high-priority focus for researchers today (Hutchings et al., 2019, Microbiology Society, n.d.).