The twentieth century was an era of discoveries in many scientific and technical fields that turned the world upside down. For a hundred years, scientific and technological progress has reached such heights that people who lived at the beginning of the century could not even imagine. Spaceflight, the Internet, civil aviation – in the 1900s, these things could sound like science fiction. However, one of the areas in which changes have most affected the lives of ordinary people has become medicine. Antibacterial drugs were invented in the late 1920s of the twentieth century (Hutchings et al., 2019). The spread of antibiotics has significantly affected the ability of mankind to fight against infectious diseases, making it possible to reduce mortality and increase life expectancy substantially.
Infectious diseases of a bacterial nature have accompanied humanity since time immemorial. According to various estimates, in the fourteenth century, from thirty to sixty percent of the then population of Europe died from the plague epidemic (Benedictow, 2021). Pathogenic microorganisms remained a significant factor in mortality in the human population until the twentieth century, until finally, an effective way to counter them was discovered. The first antibiotic was deployed in 1910, and in 1928 Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin (Hutchings et al., 2019). Since then, the industrial production of antibacterial drugs by biotechnological and chemical methods has been optimized. Today, there are many different types of antibiotics, both natural and synthetic. They have a different chemical nature and principle of action, affecting various parts of the bacterial cell. Most antibacterial drugs do not have high selectivity and lead to the death of both pathogenic and non-pathogenic microorganisms (Hutchings et al., 2019). Antibacterial drugs are the only practical approach for treating several serious infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis or plague, and conditions, such as sepsis.
Before the invention of antibiotics, there were virtually no effective treatments for severe bacterial diseases. Pathogenic microorganisms were a significant factor in mortality, which has changed with the creation of antibacterial drugs. The invention of antibiotics has had a significant positive impact on overall mortality and life expectancy (Hutchings et al., 2019). In the middle of the twentieth century, there was a trend towards the total use of antibiotics in everyday life – it came to the point that doctors prescribed them for a mild cold. At some point, the idea began to reign in popular culture that, at some point, pathogenic bacteria would be completely exterminated (Hutchings et al., 2019). Because of this irresponsible attitude, humanity faced the problem of antibiotic resistance in the 1960s. Microorganisms have begun to resist the most common antibacterial drugs, which leads to the need to create more and more new types of antibiotics every year.
The invention of antibiotics by Fleming happened almost accidentally due to a mess in the laboratory. Such a discovery might not have occurred in the twentieth century, but it might have happened much earlier. Of course, the knowledge that bacteria cause infectious diseases greatly facilitates the invention of antibiotics, but it is not vital. The pattern that mold extracts could cure plague could have been established empirically in medieval or even ancient Europe. Under such an alternative scenario, many deadly epidemics could be averted. Moreover, it could lead to the understanding that the cause of diseases is invisible to the eye and transmitted through water and air. The discovery of bacteria centuries earlier would have significantly changed the course of history.
The considered alternative for the invention of antibiotics indicates that the technical possibilities for this event existed long before the twentieth century. However, Fleming would not have discovered penicillin if there had been no scientific approach. It made it possible to come from the empirical fact about the inhibition of bacterial growth by penicillium to the invention of antibiotics. This precedent may teach scientists to pay attention and look for an explanation for even the most minor details that may, at first glance, seem insignificant.
References
Hutchings, M. I., Truman, A. W., & Wilkinson, B. (2019). Antibiotics: past, present and future. Current opinion in microbiology, 51, 72-80. Web.
Benedictow, O. J. (2021). The Complete History of the Black Death. Boydell & Brewer.