Introduction| Irish Luck|A Brief History of Penicillin|
Penicillin and Bacteria| Penicillin Affects History: Thanks to Penicillin, He will Come Home!!|
History Affects Penicillin:|References|
Before the 1940s, medicine was unable to do anything against bacterial infections. When diagnosed early, infections could be lanced or surgically opened and cleaned, and locally acting antiseptics could be used to “sterilize the area.” however, too little could be done once the infection had become “systemic” and in the blood stream. In World War I, once an infection from even a minor wound developed into dreaded gangrene which is “an infection caused by Clostridium bacteria related to the bacteria that caused botulism” (U.S. Congress, office of technology assessment, 1995, p. 37). Unfortunately, there was no treatment for this infection except for amputation of the wounded limb and prayer that the infection had not reached a soldier’s vital organs.
Military personnel were more susceptible to serious infections than other people because of their living conditions. In wartime, soldiers lived in close quarters, did not have access to healthy food or clean water. Furthermore, they had few opportunities to exercise good personal hygiene. Even in peacetime soldiers were trained in crowded and confined quarters, which facilitated transmission of infectious diseases. Historians recorded the existence and widely spread respiratory diseases among soldiers in peacetime. Soldiers suffered from streptococcal pneumonia, rheumatic fever and other respiratory diseases that were incurable at that time. So, the losses among soldiers were huge even in peacetime. The soldiers’ mothers or relatives had but little hope that their son would come back again when his military training during peacetime was over. Only few people had a little hope that their son would come back from the war because most soldiers underwent an amputation procedure of a wounded limb. However, after the discovery of penicillin, the rates of respiratory diseases among soldiers significantly decreased. Also, there was no more need for a surgical opening of the wound or even an amputation of a limb because penicillin could treat infections without any necessary surgical procedure. Thus, soldiers were able to go back home when the war finished healthy as they were when they left it before the war (U.S. Congress, office of technology assessment, 1995, p. 37).