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Article: Pathogens and people: Bacteriophage: The invisible microbe
- Article from:
- Capital (Annapolis)
- Article date:
- July 5, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 Capital (Annapolis). Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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If antibiotics disappeared tomorrow, would we be at the mercy of
every stray germ? Would every cut and scratch be a potential death
sentence? Would life become little more than survival of the
immunologically fittest? No, but life would be different, and
perhaps more complicated.
Decades before Alexander Fleming picked up a mold-speckled Petri
dish and discovered penicillin, other scientists had discovered a
mysterious entity that also could kill bacteria. In 1896, a man
named Hankin found that filtered, bacteria-free river water would
kill Vibrio cholerae, the agent of cholera. Two years later, another
physician named Gamaleya discovered a similar filtered water sample
that would kill ...