Penicillin: Man's Search For Meaning

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The one thing on Earth that has always been around and is very much so hard to avoid is sickness. Humans and diseases go hand in hand. From the earliest times, the human race has also been extremely proactive with discovering medicine to at the very least alieve or hold off any type of sicknesses. Technology is also something that is always progressing and the more important type of technology is medical technology. Medical technology includes things like X-Rays and complete hospital beds, which give people affected by physical or mental illnesses and hospital workers an easier time. Since the beginning of time, there have been ten top medical breakthroughs for humankind that a lot of people tend to overlook. Insulin, penicillin, anesthetic, …show more content…
According to the American Chemistry Society, the introduction of penicillin introduced the era of therapeutic medicine (Discovery and Development of Penicillin). Herbarium USU says, Penicillin kills by preventing some bacteria from forming new cell walls. One by one, the bacteria die because they cannot complete the process of division that produces two new "daughter" bacteria from a single "parent" bacterium. The new cell wall that needs to be made to separate the "daughters" is never formed,” (Fogel). It is currently used to prevent and treat infections such as gonorrhea and bladder infections. It made a significant assist during World War I. The soldiers would often become infected and would develop blood poisoning, so when penicillin was discovered and tested, it was immediately sent in aid to our soldiers. Penicillin was a major milestone in the war, because it nurtured ailments which ultimately resulted in the success of the war for the Allies. Overall, it’s made a huge impact into our medical …show more content…
Vaccines, vaccinations, and immunizations were set in place to control the number of outbreaks around the world. A vaccine produces immunity from diseases. A vaccination is when a weakened version of an organism is injected into a person and that person becomes immune to that organism. Immunizations are the process of a living organism becoming protected from a disease or resistant to a disease (Immunizations: The Basics). Edward Jenner performed the first vaccination on a little boy in 1796. Health Affairs stated that, “Taking pus from a cowpox lesion on a milkmaid’s hand, Jenner inoculated an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. Six weeks later Jenner variolated two sites on Phipps’s arm with smallpox, yet the boy was unaffected by this as well as subsequent exposures,” (Stern). So basically, the boy was injected with cowpox, but his body was able to fight it off. From then on, the doctors used Jenner’s techniques to develop more vaccines for different diseases and infections such as measles, pertussis, yellow fever, typhus, and many other things. Edward Jenner’s discovery had eliminated smallpox worldwide and it stopped and limited various other deadly and possible harmful