Who Are we?
The authors and designers of this website - Andrew, Jimmy, and Maria - are all biology students set to graduate in a month. We are pre-med, and all three of us plan to apply to medical school in the next few months. We decided to do this presentation on Penicillin because it is a revolutionary medication. It literally changed the field of medicine in the 40's, and it and its derivatives continue to be one of the most widely used medications today. We wanted to know more about it. We hope you will enjoy learning these things as much as we did.
penicillin
Penicillin was introduced in 1941 marking one of the most significant technological advances in modern medicine. Before penicillin, there had been some improvements in public health by the introduction of sewage disposal, clean water supplies, and encouragement of personal hygiene, but the discovery of this new miracle drug created a whole new way to treat disease and a new field in the health and science industry. To make penicillin widely available, a new system of mass production of molds had to be created with sensitive processes that had never been handled in an industrial scale. Such processes transformed Penicillin technology into what we know today as biotechnology. The clinical implications of this drug were of great importance not only for treatment of infections in the general population but also because it was discovered during a time of war which helped reduce the fatality rate of infections as low as 3% during WWII. Perhaps equally important, penicillin has facilitated the expansion of various medical interventions such as organ transplants and surgeries by preventing infections that arise during these procedures. Needless to say, the discovery of penicillin had great implications in social, economical, educational, and health aspects of our society.
Bud, Robert. Penicillin Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Oxford, 2007. Print
Neushul, Peter. "Science, Government and the Mass Production of Penicillin." Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 48.4 (1993): 371-95.
Tomes, Nancy. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998. Print
Neushul, Peter. "Science, Government and the Mass Production of Penicillin." Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 48.4 (1993): 371-95.
Tomes, Nancy. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998. Print