George Niles, age 12, of Albuquerque, N.M. for his question:
WHAT IS AN ANTIBIOTIC?
An antibiotic is a type of drug produced by tiny living things called microorganisms. Most of the microorganisms that produce medically useful antibiotics are molds and bacteria that live in the cell
Sometimes antibiotics are called wonder drugs or miracle drugs. This is so because of their wonderful power to destroy disease germs quickly, or to stop germs from growing. The best known antibiotics include penicillin, streptomycin and tetracycline.
Doctors today rank antibiotics among the most important of all life saving drugs. They serve as the doctor's best weapons against pneumonia, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, bone infections, dysentery and many other serious diseases.
Hundreds of different antibiotics have been discovered, but most of them have proved unsuitable for medical use. Some are not active enough against disease germs while others work well in test tubes but not when taken into the human body.
Penicillin is the least poisonous and the most widely used of the antibiotics. It is especially useful in fighting scarlet fever, the more common types of blood poisoning, boils, carbuncles, bone infections and the disease germs that cause most types of pneumonia.
Penicillin is not valuable for treating tularemia, diseases of the stomach and intestines, and some types of pneumonia.
Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was discovered by a British bacteriologist named Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928. Ten years later at Oxford University, a scientist named Sir Howard Florey showed that penicillin had outstanding curative powers when used in the human body.
At first, only small amounts of antibiotics could be produced at one time. But, within a few years, scientists and engineers learned how to produce these life saving drugs in large amounts.
Today, huge factories are used for the manufacture of antibiotics.
In special drug producing factories the molds or bacteria are grown free of all other microorganisms in large, closed tanks, ranging in size from 5,000 to 30,000 gallon capacity.
Sterile, or germ free, air is forced into the tanks, or fermenters. It seldom takes more than three days to complete a fermentation.
Once fermentation is complete, the antibiotic is concentrated and purified. It is carefully tested for sterility, purity and nontoxicity, to make sure it meets standards set by the antibiotics division of the Federal Food and Drug Administration.
The production of antibiotics grosses more than $500 million a year in sales in the United States. Mass production has also helped to reduce the cost of antibiotics.