Antibiotics Paper
Who discovered antibiotics and when? Alexander Fleming discovered the “Miracle Drug” in September of 1928. Alexander Fleming was credited with the discovery of Penicillin but it was a decade before it was turned into the drug that seemed to be able to cure anything. He discovered it after he went on a vacation to the family’s country house. He stacked a pile of Petri dishes to the side so that Stuart R. Craddock could use his desk while he was away. When he came back he was looking through the pile to see if he could salvage any of the Petri dishes but most of them were contaminated. He put them in a tray of Lysol. Fleming’s assistant, D. Merlin Pryce came to check on Fleming. Alexander Fleming took the opportunity to complain about how much extra work he had to do. He was rummaging through the pile of contaminated Petri dishes to show Pryce. He noticed a mold growing in one of them and saw that it had killed of some of the staphylococcus aureus. He realized that the mold had some potential and later discovered that it was a miracle drug called penicillin.
How do bacteria become resistant? Bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics in a couple of ways. One way is that the bacteria mutates and becomes a little different so that the antibiotics don’t affect it anymore. The other way that a bacterium can become resistant is by over use of antibacterial or medicated products, such as soap. If you use antibacterial soap on your hands if there are no open wounds or if you or family members are not sick then you are just helping the bacteria to become more resistant. This happens because the antibiotics in the soap are not very strong so it is similar to humans getting a vaccine. We get a little bit of the virus and it helps build our immune system and for the bacteria it is the same idea and it helps them become resistant. The bacteria can grow so strong from this that when you really need the full dose of antibiotics then it may not be affective because there was too much use of the antibacterial products. The good times to use antibacterial soap should be when you have an open wound on your hands or if there is an illness going around in your household.
Can you give a 3 year old an adult dose of prescription antibiotics for the common cold? No you can not. There could be fatal results to your child if you give them an adult dose. And besides the fact there it could do nothing but harm the child because a cold is a viral infection and antibiotics are only useful in cases where it is a bacterial infection. The common cold has no cure and you just have to let it run its course. And you should never have extra antibiotics from a prescription. You need to use the entire dose because even if you start to feel better they give you that much for a reason. It is so that they kill all one hundred percent of the bacteria. If you skip out on even a day’s dose and don’t ever take it, it may no kill all of the bacteria and you might get sick over and over again. So to sum it all up you never use antibiotics for the common cold and you NEVER give a child an adult dose of it.
Thank you for reading my report about antibiotics and I hope that you learned a lot of facts that you never knew before.
By Casey Mathews
Block 1 Science Mrs. Johnson
