ANTIMICROBIAL DRUGS - CHRONICLE OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY MEDICAL TRIUMPH

Between 1935 and 1944 the field of microbiology, and by implication medicine as a whole, underwent dramatic advancement. The discovery of the extraordinary antibacterial properties of sulphonamides, penicillin, and streptomycin triggered a frantichunt for more antimicrobial drugs that was to yield an abundant harvest in a very short space of time. By the early 1960s more than 50 antibacterial agents were available to the prescribing physician and, largely by a process of chemical modificationof existing compounds, that number has more than tripled today. We have become so used to the ready availability of these relatively safe and highly effective miracle drugs that it is now hard to grasp how they transformed the treatment of infection.