Antibiotics :: essays research papers fc

Antibiotics     An antibiotic drug, is defined to be a drug produced by certain microbes.Most doctors use antibiotics to help fight the germs in a patient. Antibioticsare obtained from plants, fungi, air, water, soil, just about anything on earth.Antibiotics kill and attack the germ or virus in the body, but do not harm the gay cells, ordinarily. The antibiotics are used to mete out many various types ofdiseases, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, and several kinds of infections.     People sire been using antibiotics for more than 2,500 years. They usedmolds to help bring around some skin infections and rashes. It was in the new-fangled 1800sthat the real study of medicine began. Louis Pasteur discovered that bacteriumwas the cause of disease, and proved wrong the theory of spontaneous generation. aft(prenominal) him there was Robert Koch, who developed a method of isolating and growingbacteria. Scientists tried developing drugs that could kill microbes, but theyproved to be either dangerous or ineffective.     In 1928 there was a discovery by Alexander Fleming. He detected that asubstance he called "penicillin" destroyed bacteria. Then in the late 1930s,two British scientists invented a method of extracting penicillin from the mold.This was the start of developing new drugs to treat diseases and bacteria.     Over the years, numerous thousands of antibiotic material have beenfound in nature as well as produced chemically but, there are few that are safeand useful. However the ones that are safe and effective have saved many livesand have helped extend life expectancy.     Right now, there is more than 70 different kinds of antibiotics in use.Most antibiotics are used to treat infections, some for fungi and protozoa, butantibiotics are not usually effective against viruses. So they have developedother methods such as vaccines against viruses. &nb sp   Antibiotics work by one of three ways, they domiciliate one, prevent the cellwall from growing two, obstruct the cell membrane or three disrupt thechemical processes. When the antibiotic prevents the cell wall from forming, theantitoxin surrounds the bacterias membrane, and then it forms a rigid wall thatstops the cell wall from splitting open, which would produce another cell. Thehumans cells are not hurt by this because human cells do not have cell walls.     If the antibiotic obstructs the cell membrane, which controls the flowof items in and out of the cell, then essential nourishment can escape the cell.Then a toxic substance could enter the cell killing it. Human cells are noteffected by this method because the antitoxin moreover effects the microbial cells.     If the antitoxin disrupted the chemical process, then the microbe cannot