Louis Pasteur was the first to demonstrate that one microorganism could be used to kill another. These would be called antibiotics. Note that there is also a broader definition of antibiotic, which includes chemicals derived from dyes that attack certain bacteria. Pasteur demonstrated that the growth of anthrax could be prevented in urine by adding some common bacteria. Subsequently, John Lister investigated the properties of molds and successfully cured a patient with an abscess with a poultice of the mold Penicillum, which had resisted all previous treatments. But only the Scottish physician Alexander Fleming, in 1928, noticed that a mold from the Penicillum family disintegrated some staphylococcal cultures (what is now known as “lysis”). He thus developed penicillin, with an antibiotic but non-irritating effect, applicable directly to infected tissue, and more powerful than John Lister’s phenol. Penicillin also proved effective against meningitis, gonorrhea, and strep throat. But the production boom came with World War II: in July 1943, American pharmaceutical companies produced 800 million units of the new antibiotic, and in 1944, it reached 140 billion units! (a 17,000% increase in one year).
