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In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory to find something extraordinary: a patch of mould had grown on a petri dish of bacteria — and the bacteria around it had died. This chance discovery led to penicillin, the first antibiotic, which went on to save millions of lives from infections that had previously been fatal. It felt like medicine had won.
But the victory was not permanent. Since antibiotics came into widespread use in the 1940s, bacteria have been fighting back through the relentless engine of natural selection. Today, MRSA infections are difficult to treat in hospitals, some strains of tuberculosis resist multiple drugs, and the World Health Organisation warns that antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats to global health. The story of antibiotics is both one of medicine's greatest triumphs and one of its most pressing ongoing challenges.
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