where does penicillin come from?
81971
penicillin, any of a group of chemically similar substances obtained from molds of the genus Penicillium that were the first antibiotic agents to be used successfully in the treatment of bacterial infections in humans. The antagonistic effect of penicillin on bacteria was first observed by the Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928. Although he recognized the therapeutic potential of penicillin, it was not until 1941 that a group of biologists working in England, including Oxford's Sir H. W. Florey and E. B. Chain, purified the substance and established its effectiveness against infectious organisms and its lack of toxicity to humans. The first successful treatment of a patient with penicillin occurred in New Haven, Conn., in 1942. Despite the development of hundreds of different antibiotics in recent decades, penicillin remains important in antibiotic therapy.
605165
Simple...ALL antibiotics that we use to treat bacterial infections and ifestations come from fungi themselves. It's just natural that fungi will have a resistance to these antibiotics that they release.\n\nA rather different approach must be used to stop fungal infection and proliferation not because they have a "tougher" cell wall or because they are eukaryotes--these things are more trivial than what people think. The difficulty in treating them is how to disintegrate their nucleic acid property (DNA) using a particular chemical without compromising the infected individual (i.e. you cannot just use acid to treat fungus in your skin or else you'll damage your skin also).
155111
We get some of our meds from Canada.  You need a prescription from your local doctor.
868327
Yeah, basically it is treated with Penicillin at 250 mg 3 times a day of Keflex at 250 mg 3 times a day.  In other words antibiotics.
463782
Not every drug is synthesized.\n\nPenicillin, for example, is extracted from a particular mold.\n\nOften the best drugs simply don't exist in nature. For example, after penicillin was discovered chemists began making molecules that are very similar to penicillin to try and find more potent forms. This led to a number of life saving medicines like amoxicillin and the cephalosporins.\n\nOther times you simply can't get enough from natural sources. Taxol is a drug used to treat breast cancer. It's found in yew trees, but you would have to wipe out an entire forest to get enough Taxol to treat a single patient. Chemists found a way to make Taxol in the laboratory, and as a result doctors have access to a drug which has helped save the lives of countless breast cancer patients.\n\nJust because a drug is made in a lab it doesn't mean it is any more or less safe than something from a natural source. There are many natural compounds-- some are beneficial, some are deadly. It's no different for compounds synthesized in the lab.
798665
The history of the origin of this synbol dates as far back as ancient Eqypt.\n\nCheck out this website!\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_prescription
285327
Your argument has some assumptions, assertions, and logic that are not sound.\n\nFirst of all, you only multiply probabilities together when they are independent variables - it would be easy to argue that many of the items that you mentioned are interdependent.\n\nAlso, I think you misunderstand what evolution of species is proposing.  Evolution does NOT depend on luck - it is instead an observation that lucky organisms survive and pass on their properties to their descendants.\n\nConsider bacteria - almost all mutations are harmful but a few bacteria have lucky mutations that make them immune to penicillin.  If penicillin is used on bacteria, only these lucky ones survive - and most of their descendants inherit the the same immunity-mutation.  \n\nThe original mutation is luck - the environment then selects and a small set of traits due to beneficial mutations persists.  And THAT is not luck, that is selection.  That's why the process is called "Natural Selection".  \n\nSadly, this is why almost all bacteria were zapped by the early antibiotics, and now (only 60 years later) we have hundreds of resistant strains.
326592
You should take it orally. There are no antibacterial properties directly associated with penicillin. The penicillin allows the body to produce its own antibodies that kill the bacteria that are causing the puss.
630870
Not likely, but you might be real lucky. Do you feel lucky? Well, do you? \n\nEatwood aside, there are several issues here: \n\nIs the mold one of those which produces penicillin? Can you distinguish among all the various possibilities?\n\nEven if it is, how much penicillin will you be ingesting? Likely not much, and almost certainly not enough. The mold has to protect only a small volume of cells from nasty bacteria, you have to protect a whole lot more. Perhaps 150 pounds of you versus maybe a miligram of mold. \n\nAnd even if there's enough penicillin, it's probably not in the proper chemical form to be ingested and remain effective. One of the things that pharma companies do, aside from producing, purifying, and concentrating the drug, is to find ways to convert it to forms which can survive passage through the stomach (acid and enzymes) and intestines (alkali and enzymes) and still be absorbed into the blood in condition to work. Or to be absorbed in a form which, when processed by the body (usually in the liver), will work. \n\nAnd still further, even if all of that somehow works out, what bacteria do you need killed? Penicillin doesn't work against all bacteria, and qutie a few have learned how to survive in a penicillin rich environment. If the one you need killed is one of those, there won't be much benefit. And anyway, are you sure it isn't a virus? Neither penicillin nor any other bacteriahave any effect on them. The only anti-viral drugs we have work very differently indeed. \n\nAll things considered, I'd suggest you suck it up and give in to artifical corporate culture (pun intended) and do it the pharma way. With all of the unfortunate accompaniements. Odd that a single industry can have earned so much disdain from its customers. Getting all of it right is not something you want to do (unless you are, perhaps, a medicinal chemist?) and certainly not when you've a bacterial infection spreading in your tissues. Not a race you want to lose, surely. Plus there's all that lab culturing business to find out what it is that you need to kill, and whether it's one of the ever so much more common drug resistant strains, ...
1038519
Go to the doctor. They will give you a shot of penicillin.
423210
yeah, they are right, heres a site with some info:\nhttp://www.antibiotics-info.org/bact02.asp
592915
lysine on the skin's surface is a natural antibiotic.
259398
It depends; quite often it comes from a water plant called agar.
385123
They do not sell OTC penicillin...but you can try Musinex.\nIt is OTC and will get rid of the mucus. Kinda pricy, but no where near prescption prices. Any pharmacy or grocery has it.
632139
I'm not sure what the V stands for, but the K stands for potassium.  I don't think a person can be allergic to penicillin as it is an essential mineral in your body that controls heart function, and many other things.
1045053
Gram positive bacteria have a substance in their cell walls called peptidoglycan.  Gram negative bacteria have a less-complex cell wall with much less peptidoglycan.  Antibiotics such as penicillin interfere with the sysnthesis of peptidiglycan and prevent the formation of a cell wall.
831736
There are four generations of cephalosporins.  Mechanism of action is similar to penicillin (interrupt bacterial cell wall). \n\nFirst generation- example: cefazolin.  Gram positive organisms, useful for surgery prophylaxis and patients mildly allergic to penicillin.\nSecond generation- example: cefoxitin.  Better gram negative coverage, and some anaerobes.  Useful for anaerobic infections, gonorrhea and diabetic foot infections.\nThird generation- example: ceftriaxone.  Mainly useful for gram negative.\nFourth generation- example: cefepime.  Gram positive cocci, and gram negative that are resistant to other cephalosporins.