Seven
surprising facts that Lauren learned during her research:
1.
Penicillin and many other antibiotics are made from common molds and mold
products. Nowadays we take these drugs so much for granted, I never stopped to
think about where they came from. Medicine from mold seems so unlikely!
2.
Before the days of modern medicine, people in parts of Eastern Europe
traditionally kept stale, moldy bread on their kitchen counters. When someone
had a cut, people cut off the moldy end of the bread and wrapped it upon the
cut to prevent infection. Although they didn't know this, they were harnessing
the power of what we would come to call penicillin.
3.
Briton Hadden, who founded "Time" Magazine and Time, Inc., with Henry Luce,
died at the age of 31 from blood poisoning brought on by a scratch from a pet
cat. This story - of someone dying from too young because of an infection -
occurred again and again before antibiotics were available. It also occurred
in my own family, inspiring me to write "A Fierce Radiance."
4.
The American Nazi group the Bund was more active in America before the war than
I ever imagined, holding mass rallies in New York City and running youth camps
on Long Island.
5.
Before antibiotics, in any war, more troops died from infection than from
actual wounds on the battlefield.
6.
During the world-wide influenza epidemic of 1918, the number of deaths was so
overwhelming that in Philadelphia, for example, "death carts" from the churches
and synagogues went through the streets to collect the bodies of parishioners
for burials in mass graves. In America today, we've essentially forgotten the
trauma of the influenza epidemic of 1918, even though it touched almost every
family.
7.
Antibiotics won't work forever. The problem of
resistance has already become so severe that several strains of bacteria are
resistant to even the strongest antibiotics. Scientists are trying to develop
new types of antibiotics, that will kill infectious bacteria in new ways, but
it's a tough battle. In a few decades, we could return to the era when an
otherwise healthy adult died from a scratch on the knee.
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