50 Years Ago

Although the annual figures for carriage-rates of all pathogenic staphylococci follow no particular course, evidence from many sources in industrialized countries shows that this is not the case with regard to the proportions of penicillin-resistant organisms ... These findings raise many questions about the origin and spread of resistant strains. They are certainly consistent with the general impression of a relationship between the increased use of penicillin and the growth of resistant strains ... It has to be borne in mind that penicillin, with other antibiotics, is being used on a large scale for preserving food and controlling animal diseases in many countries. It is increasingly present in milk and cheese, and quite large numbers of hospital, veterinary and farm workers are intermittently or continuously exposed to small concentrations of the antibiotic. These are all factors likely to promote the emergence of resistant strains in man.

From Nature 24 February 1962

100 Years Ago

By the death of Lord Lister, the world has lost one of its greatest men ... it was his work which gave the main impulse to the development of the great science of bacteriology, a science which bids fair to occupy the most prominent place in medical work ... Until Pasteur's time the existence of bacteria and their life-history had been looked on as only an interesting but not very important study ... As soon as Lister showed that the exclusion of these organisms from wounds meant the disappearance of a variety of diseases to which man had been previously subject, the study of these organisms naturally advanced with great rapidity.

From Nature 22 February 1912