Penicillin
As early as the beginning of XX century average life span was about 40 years in developed countries. The reason of rapid life was horrific child mortality, epidemics of infectious diseases followed by high lethality, endless wars, after which even relatively slight injuries caused incurable sepsis… The revolution of fighting with infections was made by discovery of antibiotics.
Long ago green mould proved the worst enemy of microbes. As far as XV century, it was used to treat septic wounds. In the end of the XIX century, an Italian physician, microbiologist and biochemist Bartolomeo Gosio (1863–1944) was occupied with isolation of antibiotics, but his works haven’t remained. The first to describe healing action of green mould in 1871–1872 were Russian scientists Vyacheslav Manasein (1841–1901) and Alexey Polotebnov (1838–1907/1908). However, it didn’t come to a creation of a certain medicine.
Only 56 years later, in 1928, a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) left a Petri dish with needless biological culture unwashed. Several days later, on September 28th, he found green mould on it and decided to study it. As it turned out, the mould produces a particular substance that depresses growth of bacteria. Fleming called this miraculous substance “penicillin”, as He identified the mould as being from the Penicillium genus. The scientist found out that penicillin itself has an effect only on microbes and doesn’t affect leucocytes and other cells of an organism in a negative way.
Soon Fleming has obtained penicillin in its pure form. However, his joy was darkened, as he couldn’t get its stable form, which would be ready to use in practice. Only in 1940, this problem was solved by a group of Oxford scientists under direction of biochemist Ernst Chain (1906–1679). An Australian pharmacologist and pathologist Howard Florey (1898–1968) was studying therapeutic properties of penicillin and was the first to use it with the medicinal aim. In the USSR, penicillin was first obtained in 1942 by microbiologists Zinaida Yermolyeva (1898–1974) and Tamara Balezina (born 1913). In 1944, the British Queen bestowed all three discoverers of penicillin the title of knight, and in a year later, Fleming, Chain and Florey the Nobel Prize laureates.
There is no doubt that antibiotics really revolutionized medical practice, and discovery of penicillin, the first of them, was the beginning of a new age in history of medicine. Before penicillin, if you had a serious infection, you died.
Nowadays pharmacologists have synthesized tens of antibiotic types, which can fight almost every disease. For now, there’s no alternative of antibiotics.
Enovid
All traditional methods of contraception (condoms, caps, sex abstinence in the middle of menstrual cycle) were ineffective — undesirable pregnancy occurred in two women out of ten. The world has changed after oral contraceptives were created.
In 1919, an Austrian scientist Ludwig Haberlandt (1885–1932) noticed that rats don’t breed after injection of ovary extract. In 1930, he suggested to use hormones to prevent undesirable pregnancy.
During a year, Gideon Richter pharmaceutical company has manufactured extract called “Infecundin”. Clinical experiments were impeded by a sudden death of Haberlandt and World War II. In the Third Reich, contraception was forbidden as it prevented the Aryan race from propagating.
After the war experiments were continued. Infecundin turned out too expensive. Ovaries of 2000 were used for a bundle of modern oral contraceptives.
In 1940, an American chemist Russell Marker (1902–1995) isolated progesterone, and 13 years later, an American biologist Gregory Pincus (1903–1967) used it to create the first cheap contraceptive pill. The project came to 3 million dollars. As the creators realized the possibility of side effects, they didn’t take a risk to test the medicine on American volunteers. Instead, they used women from poor families of Puerto Rico, Haiti and Mexico. They were the ones who felt severe side effects of the new drug. The ratio of its components was selected according to experiments on these women, who were enduring pain, bleeding, thrombosis and other complications throughout five years. “Consolation” for them was almost 100% guarantee of no pregnancy.
Oral contraceptive pills came to the counters in 1961 named “Enovid”. During four years, they have brought 24 million dollars of income, but the creator of the drug had no reward out of it.
Oral contraception finally solved the problem of undesirable pregnancy and reduced the number of gynaecological diseases and infant deaths. By giving women control over their reproductive system, these drugs had far-reaching medical and social impact. The era of desired children has come.