LAUSR

When penicillin was first discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, by the time of its distribution for therapeutic use in the 1940s for treatment of such diseases as syphilis, an almost incurable disease appeared now to be curable. Indeed, for a disease that had for decades been treated with inorganic mercury salts and arsenic compounds, there was optimism that drugs used for so long ‘without any indications of an increased incidence of arsenic-resistant infections, … gives grounds for hoping that the widespread use of penicillin will equally not result in an increasing incidence of infections resistant to penicillin