History Fact Finder | Medicine and Disease - When Were Antibiotics Invented?

When were antibiotics invented?

The idea of using antibiotics (substances that kill bacteria, that is, germs) originated in the late nineteenth century. In 1943 American microbiologist Selman A. Waksman (1888–1973) discovered a fungus that produced a powerful antibiotic substance. He named it streptomycin. This original antibiotic, which was produced in quantity in 1944, helped in treating such lethal diseases as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, and bacterial meningitis. Although streptomycin saved numerous lives, it was eventually found to be unsafe and removed from the market in favor of newer, safer antibiotics, such as sulfa drugs and penicillin.

The first safe antibiotics were invented in 1945 by British scientists Howard Florey (1898–1968) and Ernst Boris Chain (1906–1979), who expanded the penicillin research of Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (1881–1955). Florey and Chain...

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