penicilline

Introduction

Today, the use of penicillin and other antibiotics are common place. The various antibiotics are used to treat a number of what are now common diseases and to prevent the onset of infections when our skin, our first barrier to fight off disease, is somehow broken through a simple cut or a more serious wound. It is something that we all take for granted, today. However, many diseases and simple wounds that are so easily treated today because of the availability of antibiotics has not always been available. Antibiotics are a relatively recent discovery and the first practical one, penicillin, was not available until the early 1940s. Even the concept of using fungal products, such as penicillin, to produce medicine is a relatively new one. However, many folk remedies that have included fungi have long been utilized, but the incorporation of fungi into the remedy was inadvertent and not known. For example, over three thousand years ago, the Chinese had put…