The grim prospect
The evolution of pathogens is making many medical problems worse. Time to take drug resistance seriously
FEW, nowadays, would regard gardening as dangerous. But on March 14th 1941 a British policeman called Albert Alexander died of it. Early that year he had been scratched on the face by a rose. The wound became infected by bacteria, probably Staphylococcus aureus with an admixture of various Streptococci, and turned septic. The sepsis spread. First, he lost an eye. Then, he lost his life.
What made Alexander doubly unlucky was that he was almost cured. The hospital treating him, the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, was a few hundred metres from a university laboratory where Howard Florey and Ernst Chain were brewing up extracts of a mould called Penicillium chrysogenum. Repeated injections of this extract came close to abolishing Alexander’s infection, but the two scientists ran out of their home-brewed drug before the bacteria had all been killed. When the treatment stopped the sepsis roared back.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "The grim prospect"
From the May 21st 2016 edition
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