This is a medical phenomenon today, completely normal, but until the last century, medicine was not like this.
It may be the main thing that doctors can do to set bones for the injured and deliver babies to pregnant women. In addition, most doctors can't actually cure other diseases in the outside world, but more play a role of comfort, as American doctor Trudeau said, "occasionally cure, often help, always comfort." It is not that doctors have no medical ethics and lack the support of scientific theory. There is nothing they can do. Only a few drugs will be used to treat most diseases.
Since Levin Hooke invented the microscope, people have gradually entered the new world of microorganisms and realized that the pathogens that cause people to get sick are bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms. So people began to look for a substance that can kill pathogens without adversely affecting the human body itself. Subsequently, Shar Fusan, Bailang Duoxi and other antibacterial drugs appeared, but the diseases targeted by these two drugs were very limited. Salfo powder can only treat syphilis and trypanosomiasis, and Bailangduoxi can only resist streptococcus and non-streptococcus. They act like bullets, and the discovery of antibiotics means detonating an arsenal.
It is not too much to emphasize the role of antibiotics. It can be said that the development history of antibiotics is half a medical history.
So what are antibiotics? Antibiotics are substances that can inhibit or kill microorganisms. The microbial species here have gradually expanded from the initial bacteria to fungi, viruses, mycoplasma, chlamydia and so on. Antibiotics in our daily life mainly refer to a kind of substances that can inhibit the growth of bacteria or kill them. They are usually produced by certain kinds of bacteria and fungi. "mycin, cephalosporin, ofloxacin, penicillin, nitrozole" and so on. Drugs containing such names are generally antibiotics.
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What is the significance of antibiotics to human beings? For example, Washington, the father of the United States, was treated by a doctor before his death. The doctor used vomiting, bloodletting and enema, which brought him great pain. It was not that the doctors wanted to kill him, but that they adopted the most popular and authoritative method at that time. However, there is no accurate scientific principle behind this practice, so it is impossible to find the real cause, let alone kill the pathogenic substances from the source, so it may bring more harm than good to patients.
Why do people get sick, what is the nature of illness, and how to treat it? There were no answers to these questions at that time, and most of the time they depended on people's subjective guesses and guesses.
Since the middle and late19th century, medicine has just started to get on the right track. Louis Pasteur, a French microbiologist, tried to find that bacteria are the chief culprit of many infectious diseases. So people began to look for drugs against bacteria. Drugs such as saffo powder and Bailang Duoxi have appeared, but the effect is very limited. The first antibiotic penicillin was accidentally discovered by alexander fleming, a British Scottish doctor (staphylococcus Petri dishes were contaminated by Penicillium).
Generally speaking, bacteria are divided into two categories, gram-positive bacteria and gram-negative bacteria. Penicillin can only be used to treat most diseases caused by gram-positive bacteria. But at that time, with its excellent curative effect, antibiotics finally stepped onto the altar, bringing health to countless patients and changing the competition rules of the pharmaceutical industry.
In the 1920s, the main profit sources of American pharmaceutical industry were vitamins and antibacterial drugs, and the pharmaceutical industry ranked 16 in the national industry profit ranking. However, due to the huge demand for antibiotics caused by World War II, the pharmaceutical industry has become the most profitable industry. At the same time, once the major pharmaceutical companies got the contract to produce antibiotics from the government, they quickly crushed other peers, leaving only a few giants after a large-scale industry merger. Today, companies we are familiar with, such as Squibb, Pfizer, Merck, etc., have all boarded the antibiotic express train and established their leading position in the pharmaceutical industry.
After earning the first pot of gold through penicillin, pharmaceutical companies began to accelerate the pace of exploring antibiotics. According to statistics, within ten years of the discovery of penicillin, all antibiotics that can be seen on the market today have been discovered one after another.
Penicillin is a narrow-band antibiotic, which can only fight gram-positive bacteria. Subsequently, streptomycin was found in soil, which is also a narrow-spectrum antibiotic, but it is aimed at gram-negative bacteria. The pathogen of tuberculosis is gram-negative bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) that are afraid of streptomycin. After streptomycin, erythromycin was found, which is a narrow-band antibiotic similar to penicillin and resistant to gram-positive bacteria.
The American Lida Company discovered chlortetracycline, which is the first broad-spectrum antibiotic discovered by human beings, and can fight against gram-positive bacteria and gram-negative bacteria. Subsequently, litmus discovered oxytetracycline, which is also a broad-spectrum antibiotic.
Chlortetracycline and oxytetracycline are called tetracycline.
It can be said that whoever discovers new antibiotics first can occupy the market and get rich profits, but it also faces risks. Chloramphenicol was discovered by Davis Company in the United States. It is a very effective antibiotic, but it is banned because it may lead to aplastic anemia. At present, it only exists in a few drugs such as eye drops.
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At present, there are three main problems in the popularization of antibiotics.
First, scientific and profitable issues. Because the research and development of new antibiotics needs a lot of capital investment, and once found, it needs a lot of publicity and packaging to make a profit without far exceeding the effect of similar antibiotics (since the frenzy of antibiotic discovery, most antibiotics are now tinkering on the original basis), which leads to the lack of scientific rigor.
Second, drug resistance caused by abuse of antibiotics. Since the discovery of antibiotics, doctors always like to add antibiotics when prescribing drugs to various patients. Although this is unnecessary, it is harmless to the human body. Why not prescribe antibiotics? So doctors will prescribe several antibiotics for diseases that are obviously caused by viruses, such as bronchitis. In addition, in aquaculture, there is also the phenomenon of abuse of antibiotics. Adding antibiotics to chicken feed can significantly shorten the growth cycle and increase the total profit. However, due to the addition of a small amount of antibiotics in the feed, some phenomena will occur: such a low concentration of antibiotics can kill some weak bacteria, but most of them can't, and these bacteria that can't be killed gradually develop drug resistance. As early as 1945, Fleming warned that putting very low concentrations of antibiotics into bacteria would probably make the original bacteria resistant.
Third, the discovery of antibiotics is slow, and the types of bacterial resistance are increasing.