How to obtain penicillin at home. Natural antibiotics, herbs

“When I woke up at dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly did not plan to revolutionize medicine with my discovery of the world’s first antibiotic or killer bacteria,” he wrote in his diary. Alexander Fleming, the man who invented penicillin.

The idea of using microbes to fight germs dates back to the 19th century. It was already clear to scientists that in order to combat wound complications, we must learn to paralyze the microbes that cause these complications, and that microorganisms can be killed with their help. In particular, Louis Pasteur discovered that bacilli anthrax die under the influence of some other microbes. In 1897 Ernest Duchesne used mold, that is, the properties of penicillin, to treat typhus in guinea pigs.

In fact, the date of invention of the first antibiotic is September 3, 1928. By this time, Fleming was already famous and had a reputation as a brilliant researcher; he studied staphylococci, but his laboratory was often untidy, which was the reason for the discovery.

Penicillin. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

On September 3, 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory after a month of absence. Having collected all the cultures of staphylococci, the scientist noticed that mold fungi appeared on one plate with the cultures, and the colonies of staphylococci present there were destroyed, while other colonies were not. Fleming attributed the mushrooms that grew on the plate with his cultures to the genus Penicillium, and named the isolated substance penicillin.

During further research, Fleming noticed that penicillin affected bacteria such as staphylococci and many other pathogens that cause scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria. However, the remedy they allocated did not help with typhoid fever and paratyphoid.

As Fleming continued his research, he discovered that penicillin was difficult to work with, production was slow, and penicillin could not survive in the human body long enough to kill bacteria. Also, the scientist could not extract and purify the active substance.

Until 1942, Fleming improved the new drug, but until 1939 it was not possible to develop an effective culture. In 1940, a German-English biochemist Ernst Boris Chain And Howard Walter Flory, an English pathologist and bacteriologist, were actively involved in trying to purify and isolate penicillin, and after some time they were able to produce enough penicillin to treat the wounded.

In 1941, the medicine was accumulated on a sufficient scale for effective dose. The first person to be saved with the new antibiotic was a 15-year-old boy with blood poisoning.

In 1945, Fleming, Florey and Chain was awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine “for the discovery of penicillin and its healing effects in various infectious diseases.”

The value of penicillin in medicine

At the height of World War II in the United States, the production of penicillin was already put on the conveyor belt, which saved tens of thousands of American and allied soldiers from gangrene and amputation of limbs. Over time, the method of producing the antibiotic was improved, and since 1952, relatively cheap penicillin began to be used on an almost global scale.

With the help of penicillin, you can cure osteomyelitis and pneumonia, syphilis and puerperal fever, and prevent the development of infections after wounds and burns - previously all these diseases were fatal. During the development of pharmacology, antibacterial drugs of other groups were isolated and synthesized, and when other types of antibiotics were obtained.

Drug resistance

For several decades, antibiotics became almost a panacea for all diseases, but even the discoverer Alexander Fleming himself warned that penicillin should not be used until the disease is diagnosed, and the antibiotic should not be used for a short time and in very small quantities, since under these conditions Bacteria develop resistance.

When pneumococcus that was not sensitive to penicillin was identified in 1967, and antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus were discovered in 1948, scientists realized that.

“The discovery of antibiotics was the greatest benefit for humanity, the salvation of millions of people. Man created more and more new antibiotics against various infectious agents. But the microcosm resists, mutates, microbes adapt. A paradox arises - people are developing new antibiotics, but the microcosm is developing its own resistance,” said Galina Kholmogorova, senior researcher at the State Research Center for Preventive Medicine, candidate of medical sciences, expert of the National Health League.

According to many experts, the fact that antibiotics lose their effectiveness in fighting diseases is largely to blame for the patients themselves, who do not always take antibiotics strictly according to indications or in the required doses.

“The problem of resistance is extremely large and affects everyone. It causes great concern among scientists; we can return to the pre-antibiotic era, because all microbes will become resistant, not a single antibiotic will act on them. Our inept actions have led to the fact that we may find ourselves without very powerful drugs. There will simply be nothing to treat such terrible diseases as tuberculosis, HIV, AIDS, malaria,” explained Galina Kholmogorova.

That is why antibiotic treatment must be treated very responsibly and a number of rules must be followed. simple rules, in particular:

Today it is fashionable to criticize antibiotics, attributing to them all conceivable and inconceivable shortcomings. But with the advent of penicillin, the world changed forever and certainly became a better place.

Who discovered Penicillin?

At the beginning of the 20th century, a means to combat infections became a necessity. The population grew, especially in industrial cities. And with such crowding, any infection threatened a large-scale epidemic.

Scientists already knew a lot about bacteria, the causative agents of the most common and dangerous diseases were isolated and studied, and some drugs were used. But there was no truly effective medicine.

At the end of the 20s of the last century, Alexander Fleming (1881 - 1955) actively studied pathogenic microorganisms, including staphylococci - the cause of many diseases.

History of discovery

The literature, including fiction, colorfully describes that the Scottish scientist was careless and did not deactivate the bacterial cultures immediately after working with them. And one day he noticed that the growing mold had dissolved colonies of staphylococci in one of the Petri dishes.

You need to understand that this was not ordinary mold, but brought from a neighboring laboratory. It turned out that it belongs to the genus Penicillium (penicillum). There were doubts about its variety, but experts determined that it was penicillium notatum.

Fleming began growing this fungus in bottles of nutrient broth and conducting tests. It turned out that even with strong dilution, this antiseptic is able to suppress the growth and reproduction of not only staphylococcus, but also other pathogenic cocci (gonococcus, pneumococcus), and diphtheria bacillus. At the same time, E. coli, cholera virions, typhus and paratyphoid pathogens did not respond to the action of penicillium notatum.

But the main questions were how to isolate a pure substance that destroys bacteria, how to maintain its activity for a long time? - There was no answer to them. Fleming tried to use the broth topically - for treating purulent wounds, for instillation into the eyes and nose (for conjunctivitis, rhinitis). But massive research has reached a dead end.

In the 40s, attempts to isolate pure penicillin were continued by the so-called Oxford group of microbiologists. Howard Walter Florey and Ernest Chain obtained a powder that could be diluted and injected.

Research was spurred by the Second World War. In 1941, the Americans joined the research and invented a more effective technology for producing penicillin. This medicine was necessary on the fronts, where any wound and even just abrasion threatened blood poisoning and death.

The Soviet government asked the Allies to provide a new medicine, but received no response. Then the Institute of Experimental Medicine, headed by Z. V. Ermolyeva, began its own work. Several dozen options were explored Penicillium fungus and the most active one, Penicillium crustosum, was isolated. In 1943, domestic “penicillin-crustosin” began to be produced on an industrial scale.

This drug turned out to be more effective than the American one. Flory himself visited Moscow to verify this. He, too, wanted to get the original culture of our antibiotic. He was not refused, but was given Penicillium notatum, already known in the West.

Modern concept of antibiotics

Antimicrobial drugs today are divided into many groups. According to the production method they are divided into:

Biosynthetic - natural - they are isolated from microorganism cultures;
Semi-synthetic - they are obtained by chemical modification of substances secreted by microorganisms.

The classification by chemical composition is widely used:

β-lactams - penicillin, cephalosporin, etc.;
Macrolides – erythromycin, etc.;
Tetracyclines and so on.

Antibiotics are also divided according to their spectrum of action: broad spectrum, narrow spectrum. By predominant effect:

bacteriostatic – stop bacterial division;
bactericidal - destroy adult forms of bacteria.

Modern penicillin and natural antibiotics

Today the ancestor of all antibiotics is called benzylpenicillin. This is a β-lactam natural bactericidal drug. In its pure form it is no different wide range actions. Some types of gram-negative bacteria, anaerobes, spirochetes and some other pathogens are sensitive to it.

Most of the “claims” that people now like to make about all antibiotics can be attributed to natural penicillins:

They often cause allergies - immediate and delayed reactions. Moreover, this applies to any products that contain penicillin, including cosmetics and food products.
The toxic effect of penicillins on the nervous system, mucous membranes (inflammation occurs), and kidneys has also been described.
When some microorganisms are suppressed, others can multiply enormously. This is how superinfections arise - for example, thrush.
This medicine must be administered in injections - it is destroyed in the stomach. In addition, the drug is eliminated quickly, requiring frequent injections.
Many strains of microorganisms have or are developing resistance to its action. People who misuse the antibiotic are often to blame.

But it is important to understand that such (and a wider) list of undesirable effects of penicillins appeared thanks to their excellent study. All these disadvantages do not make this drug “poisonous” and do not cover up the obvious benefits that it still brings to patients.

Suffice it to say that all international medical organizations have recognized the possibility of treating pregnant women with penicillin.

To expand the spectrum of action of a natural antibiotic, it is combined with substances that destroy bacterial defenses - β-lactamase inhibitors (sulbactam, clavulonic acid, etc.). Long-acting forms have also been developed.

Modern semi-synthetic modifications help overcome the disadvantages of natural penicillin.

Antibiotics of the penicillin group

benzylpenicillin (penicillin G);
phenoxymethylpenicillin (penicillin V);
benzathine benzylpenicillin;
benzylpenicillin procaine;
benzathine phenoxymethylpenicillin.

Extended spectrum of action -

Against Pseudomonas aeruginosa -

Combined with beta-lactamase inhibitors –

How to dilute penicillin

Whenever an antibiotic is prescribed, the doctor must indicate the exact dose and dilution ratio. Trying to “guess” them on your own will lead to dire consequences.

The dilution standard for penicillin is ED per 1 ml of solvent (this can be sterile water for injection or saline). Different solvents are recommended for different drugs.

For the procedure you will need 2 syringes (or 2 needles) - for dilution and for injection.

Following the rules of asepsis and antiseptics, open the ampoule with the solvent and draw the required amount of liquid.
Puncture the rubber cap of the bottle with penicillin powder with a needle at a 90-degree angle. The tip of the needle should appear no more than 2 mm from the inside of the cap. Add the solvent (required amount) into the bottle. Disconnect the syringe from the needle.
Shake the bottle until the powder is completely dissolved. Place the syringe on the needle. Turn the bottle upside down and draw the required dose of medication into the syringe. Remove the bottle from the needle.
Change the needle to a new one - sterile, closed with a cap. Give an injection.

It is necessary to prepare the drug immediately before the injection - the activity of penicillin in the solution decreases sharply.

How can you get penicillin at home?

#1 Olga Sergeevna

LoversPt likes this.

#2 s324

#3 gvozd

#4 nick_23

I hope that I can get an answer to the question here - how can you get penicillin at home? that is, without any chemicals, just their mold. I heard that somehow this is possible.

When I hear/read something like that, I immediately remember the joke.

Patient: I have a headache

Doctor XX BC : Here, eat the root.

X AD : These roots are witchcraft, say a prayer!

XVII AD : These prayers are a stupid superstition, drink the potion!

XIX AD : These potions are quackery, take the powder!

XXI AD : These antibiotics are of artificial origin, eat the root.

#5 ttt_70

Natural producers have an activity of about 20 units/ml, industrial ones - about 20 units/ml.

Read the chapter on penicillin (from 309 onwards). Without proper equipment it is a waste of time. Otherwise, mold would have been treated. Super-producing strains obtained either through long-term selection or directed mutations are used in industry. And they won't be cheap. So at home, alas.

The doses of antibiotics are increasing, because... the population is becoming accustomed to antibiotics. Back in the medical directory of the sixties of the last century it was:

For common forms, penicillin is applied topically in the form of penicillin ointment per 100 g of base.

So it's not a complete waste of time. Yes, and just interesting. By the way, the book no longer opens.

#6 ttt_70

Together with another doctor, Fleming was engaged in research on staphylococci. But without finishing his work, this doctor left the department. Old dishes with cultures of microbial colonies were still on the shelves of the laboratory - Fleming always considered cleaning his room a waste of time. One day, having decided to write an article about staphylococci, Fleming looked into these cups and discovered that many of the cultures there were covered with mold. This, however, was not surprising - apparently mold spores had been brought into the laboratory through the window. Another thing was surprising: when Fleming began to examine the culture, in many cups there was no trace of staphylococci - there was only mold and transparent, dew-like drops. Has ordinary mold really destroyed all pathogenic microbes? Fleming immediately decided to test his guess and placed some mold in a test tube with nutrient broth. When the fungus developed, he introduced various bacteria into the same cup and placed it in a thermostat. Having then examined the nutrient medium, Fleming discovered that light and transparent spots had formed between the mold and the colonies of bacteria - the mold seemed to constrain the microbes, preventing them from growing near them. Then Fleming decided to make a larger experiment: he transplanted the fungus into a large vessel and began to observe its development. Soon the surface of the vessel was covered with “felt” - a fungus that had grown and gathered in tight spaces. “Felt” changed its color several times: first it was white, then green, then black. The nutrient broth also changed color - it turned from transparent to yellow. “Obviously, mold releases some substances into the environment,” Fleming thought and decided to check whether they had properties harmful to bacteria. New experience has shown that the yellow liquid destroys the same microorganisms that the mold itself destroyed. Moreover, the liquid had extremely high activity - Fleming diluted it twenty times, but the solution still remained destructive for pathogenic bacteria.

No selection or mutations.

In order to turn penicillin into a drug, it had to be combined with some substance soluble in water, but in such a way that, being purified, it would not lose its amazing properties. For a long time this problem seemed insoluble - penicillin quickly destroyed in an acidic environment (which is why, by the way, it could not be taken orally) and did not last long in an alkaline environment; it easily went into ether, but if it was not placed on ice, it was destroyed in it. Only after many experiments did the liquid secreted by the fungus and containing aminopenicillic acid succeed the hard way filter and dissolve in a special organic solvent in which potassium salts, which are highly soluble in water, are not soluble. After exposure to potassium acetate, white crystals of the potassium salt of penicillin precipitated. After doing many manipulations, Chain received a slimy mass, which he finally managed to turn into a brown powder.

What kind of solvent was this?

In the USSR, penicillin from the mold Penicillium crustosum (this fungus was taken from the wall of one of the Moscow bomb shelters) was obtained in 1942 by Professor Zinaida Ermolyeva. There was a war going on. Hospitals were overcrowded with wounded people with purulent lesions caused by staphylococci and streptococci, complicating already severe wounds. The treatment was difficult. Many wounded died from purulent infection. In 1944, after much research, Ermolyeva went to the front to test the effect of her drug.

Penicillin seemed like a real miracle to seasoned field surgeons. He cured even the most seriously ill patients who were already suffering from blood poisoning or pneumonia. In the same year, factory production of penicillin was established in the USSR.

How exactly did you receive it? Kstity, also without selection.

Penicillin was obtained from ordinary mold, which could cure patients of many diseases, even if it was tens of times weaker than the modern one.

Biosynthesis of penicillin. Penicillin is obtained by the deep method (i.e. in a liquid nutrient medium). Molds of the genus Penicillium are used as producers. The original producer culture is used in the form of spores. They are grown in vials at temperature °C for 4-5 days. Mycelia are multiplied to 5-10% of the fermenter volume. Nutrient media for penicillin biosynthesis are prepared from corn extract (2-3%), lactose (5%), glucose (1.5%), ammonium sulfate and phosphates (0.5 and 1.0%) and phenylacetic acid - an antibiotic precursor (0.3-0.6%). Chalk is used to stabilize the pH. Fermentation is carried out at a temperature of °C, pH 5.0-7.5, with intensive aeration of the environment. Within 4 days, the amount of penicillin reaches its maximum (dU/ml). The mycelium is separated by filtration, and it is used in animal husbandry as a source of proteins and vitamins. Penicillin is isolated from the culture liquid (the filtrate contains 3-6% of dry substances, of which only % is penicillin). Protein impurities are removed by precipitation with metal salts or denaturation. Penicillin is extracted twice with organic solvents (butyl acetate or amyl acetate). As a result of extraction, the purity of the product increases 4-6 times (activity 000 U/ml).

Secondary extraction with butyl acetate increases the activity of the extract to 0000 U/ml. The yield of penicillin is 86% of its original amount in the culture liquid.

But there are several questions:

Recipes for the nutrient medium vary, but phenylacetic acid remains as an antibiotic precursor, although some textbooks simply say: precursor. Are there any other predecessors?

Let's say nasturtium oil consists almost exclusively of phenylacetic acid nitrile, can it be used?

Can I use ethyl acetate instead of butyl acetate or amyl acetate?

This process has the following technological sequence:

1. Dehydration of the butyl acetate extract by cooling to °C followed by filtration from ice. Removal of pigmented contaminants by treatment with activated carbon and filtration on a cooled dry filter.

2. Preparation of benzylpenicillin potassium salt concentrate by extraction with 0.56-0.6 N sodium hydroxide solution.

3. Sterilizing filtration of potassium salt concentrate and evaporation under vacuum with butyl alcohol (2.5 volumes) at a temperature of °C and a residual pressure of mmHg. Art. The volume of the bottom residue should be no more than% of the volume of the loaded concentrate. The addition of butanol to the concentrate during evaporation under vacuum is due to the fact that butanol with water forms a mixture that boils at a lower temperature compared to the boiling point of water. The distillation of water is carried out under relatively mild conditions, as a result of which the possibility of penicillin inactivation is reduced. After removing the water and most of the butyl alcohol potassium salt benzylpenicillin crystallizes,

4. Filtration of the precipitate of the potassium salt of benzylpenicillin using a filter centrifuge and washing the precipitate with anhydrous butyl alcohol.

5. Granulation of the resulting paste and drying of the potassium salt in vacuum drying cabinets at a temperature of °C and a residual pressure of mmHg. Art. In this case, the potassium salt of benzylpenicillin is obtained in the form of a white fine-crystalline powder with an activity containing benzylpenicillin of about 95% and a yield of 70% of the amount of antibiotic in the native solution.

The first and second points are not difficult.

Regarding the third, there are questions:

If ethyl acetate can be used instead of butyl acetate, then there is no need to dilute it with alcohol, because The boiling point of ethyl acetate is less than 80 degrees, do I understand correctly?

Why is the evaporation temperature so low? After all, in point 5, drying is carried out at a temperature of degrees, which means this is an acceptable temperature.

In point 4, again, can you replace butyl alcohol with ethyl alcohol?

Well, drying, I don’t think that in 1942 they dried it in a vacuum dryer. Will something change significantly if evaporation and drying are not carried out in a vacuum?

how to get penicillin at home?

Quote from the book

All bacteria on earth have long learned to produce the substance Penicillinase, which destroys penicillin and its derivatives. They create a cloud of Penicillinase around themselves and thus the use of this antibiotic is useless. According to medical data, they learned to do this from us; by eating our cells, they read the information. And since our body also sees the antibiotic as foreign to it, it was the first to produce this substance, and the bacteria, in turn, learned to do so.

How to make penicillin: manufacturing process

Penicillin refers to antibiotics that were obtained naturally, without the use of any artificial methods. This medicine is obtained from ordinary mold or its synthetic analogue. In any case, the problem of making penicillin at home is not fully resolved. Is there an answer to the question of how to make penicillin? So, below will be some instructions or, so to speak, a recommendation that allows you to create an antibiotic at home. You don't have to go far - penicillin can be made from certain products. It’s worth opening your refrigerator and simply finding a spoiled product, for example, cheese. You can look into the bread bin, because this particular product can spoil quite quickly. The mold that appears is penicillin. How to inject it is not entirely clear.

It is worth noting that the mold that can easily be found on products is not always exactly penicillin, or it is true, but the content of the necessary ingredient is minimal. Simply put, the existing mold may not be enough. After all, if it contained enough penicillin, then many doctors would directly prescribe eating mold and not spending money on antibiotics. So how do you get penicillin? So, first you need to take a piece of bread and leave the product to spoil in natural environment without speeding up the process. As soon as greenish mold begins to appear on the surface, the bread should be placed in a previously prepared flask in a dark place for about five days. After the specified time has passed, it is worth preparing a nutrient medium to obtain penicillin. How to get it?

To do this you will need to take lactose, corn starch, manganese, sodium and calcium. Mix everything in equal proportions and pour cold water. After that, literally one teaspoon of mold spores should be added to the prepared medium. Next, you need to pour it into jars and then let the antibiotic brew for 7 days. After these operations, you need to filter the resulting liquid with a favorable nutrient medium. All of the above describes how to make penicillin. How to dilute it depends on the volume of the substance. But it is best to purchase this antibiotic at a pharmacy and use a prescription, which will tell you how to dilute and take it.

What is penicillin and who discovered it?

At the beginning of the last century, many diseases were incurable or difficult to treat. People died from simple infections, sepsis and pneumonia.

A real revolution in medicine occurred in 1928, when penicillin was discovered. For the whole human history There has never been a drug that has saved as many lives as this antibiotic.

Over the course of decades, it has cured millions of people and remains one of the most effective medications to this day. What is penicillin? And to whom does humanity owe its appearance?

What is penicillin?

Penicillin is part of the group of biosynthetic antibiotics and has a bactericidal effect. Unlike many other antiseptic drugs, it is safe for humans, since the fungal cells that make up it are fundamentally different from the outer shells of human cells.

The action of the drug is based on inhibition of the vital activity of pathogenic bacteria. It blocks the substance peptidoglycan they produce, thereby preventing the formation of new cells and destroying existing ones.

What is penicillin for?

Penicillin is capable of destroying gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, anaerobic bacilli, gonococci and actinomycetes.

Nowadays, many bacteria have managed to adapt to it, mutated and formed new species, but the antibiotic is still successfully used in surgery to treat acute purulent diseases and remains the last hope for patients with meningitis and furunculosis.

What does penicillin consist of?

The main component of penicillin is the mold fungus penicillium, which forms on products and leads to their spoilage. It can usually be seen as a blue or greenish colored mold. The healing effect of the fungus has been known for a long time. Also in XIX century Arab horse breeders removed mold from damp saddles and smeared it on the wounds on the backs of horses.

In 1897, the French physician Ernest Duchenne was the first to test the effects of mold on guinea pigs and managed to cure them of typhus. The scientist presented the results of his discovery at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, but his research did not receive the approval of medical luminaries.

Who discovered penicillin?

The discoverer of penicillin was the British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, who managed to completely accidentally isolate the drug from a strain of fungi.

History of the discovery of penicillin

The history of the discovery of the drug is quite interesting, since the appearance of the antibiotic was a happy accident. During those years, Fleming lived in Scotland and was engaged in research in the field of bacterial medicine. He was quite messy, so he didn’t always clean up the test tubes after tests. One day, a scientist left home for a long time, leaving Petri dishes with staphylococcus colonies dirty.

When Fleming returned, he found that mold was growing on them, and in some places there were areas without bacteria. Based on this, the scientist came to the conclusion that mold is capable of producing substances that kill staphylococci.

Saving mold: the history of the creation of penicillin

Back in the 30s of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people died from dysentery, pneumonia, typhoid, pneumonic plague, and sepsis was a death sentence.

“When I woke at dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly did not plan to revolutionize medicine with my discovery of the world’s first antibiotic or killer bacteria,” Alexander Fleming, the man who invented penicillin, wrote in his diary.

The idea of using microbes to fight germs dates back to the 19th century. It was already clear to scientists that in order to combat wound complications, we must learn to paralyze the microbes that cause these complications, and that microorganisms can be killed with their help. In particular, Louis Pasteur discovered that anthrax bacilli are killed by the action of certain other microbes. In 1897, Ernest Duchesne used the mold, i.e. the properties of penicillin, to treat typhus in guinea pigs.

During further research, Fleming noticed that penicillin affected bacteria such as staphylococci and many other pathogens that cause scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria. However, the remedy he isolated did not help against typhoid fever and paratyphoid fever.

Until 1942, Fleming improved the new drug, but until 1939 it was not possible to develop an effective culture. In 1940, the German-English biochemist Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey, an English pathologist and bacteriologist, were actively involved in an attempt to purify and isolate penicillin, and after some time they managed to produce enough penicillin to treat the wounded.

In 1941, the drug was accumulated on a sufficient scale for an effective dose. The first person to be saved with the new antibiotic was a 15-year-old boy with blood poisoning.

In 1945, Fleming, Florey and Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of penicillin and its beneficial effects in various infectious diseases."

The value of penicillin in medicine

Drug resistance

When pneumococcus that was not sensitive to penicillin was identified in 1967, and antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus were discovered in 1948, scientists realized that bacteria were adapting to drugs.

“The discovery of antibiotics was the greatest benefit for humanity, the salvation of millions of people. Man created more and more new antibiotics against various infectious agents. But the microcosm resists, mutates, microbes adapt. A paradox arises - people are developing new antibiotics, but the microcosm is developing its own resistance,” said Galina Kholmogorova, senior researcher at the State Research Center for Preventive Medicine, Candidate of Medical Sciences, expert of the National Health League.

That is why antibiotic treatment must be treated very responsibly and a number of simple rules must be followed, in particular:

– do not interrupt the course of treatment, even if you feel better;

Penicillin

Every second visitor to alternative history forums will explain to you that mold can cure all diseases. After all, mold produces a miracle drug - penicillin. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

There are thousands of types of mold, and most of them are useless - they either do not produce antibiotics or produce them in negligible quantities. What we need is Penicillium chrysogenum. In addition, Alexander Fleming was simply lucky - he immediately came across a strain with very high efficiency. If you don't have the right mold sample in your pocket, then be prepared for thousands of experiments with a wide variety of rotten products.

So we made a microscope, did thousands of experiments. The necessary mold is in our hands. Victory? Hell no. Mold produces not only penicillin, but also thousands of other substances, most of them waste products. To kill a disease, we need to introduce an antibiotic into the blood. If you introduce a small amount of secretions, the concentration will be too low; introducing a large amount of all sorts of rubbish will kill the patient. This means we need to get concentrated penicillin.

Evaporation will not work: antibiotics are substances with a complex structure and easily decompose when heated. Vacuum evaporation will give us a syrupy brown mass with ten times the penicillin content of the broth. But this concentration is still not enough, and the impurities contained in the concentrate are toxic.

During the first studies, penicillin was isolated by dissolving the evaporated mass in ether and evaporating it again. Then it was necessary to treat with alkali to stabilize the substance. The slightest mistake or change in technology led to failure. Chemists who tried to isolate pure penicillin said that this substance disappears “while you look at it”! Vacuum evaporation and extraction with ether succeeded in obtaining small amounts of the substance, but the process was too capricious for practical use.

Success was achieved using lyophilization. The lyophilization method is based on a very simple principle: in a vacuum, frozen aqueous solutions pass directly from a solid state to a gaseous state. This phenomenon is observed in high mountain areas, where the ice “sublimates” (turns into steam) without melting. When does an aqueous solution containing different substances, is frozen, these substances in the solid state cease to interact (corpora non agunt nisi fluida). If the water is then removed by sublimation, the solids that form the dry precipitate remain active for a very long time. In this way it was possible to protect penicillin from destruction.

First, the evaporated mass was lyophilized. Then it was washed with methanol - and again for lyophilization. In this way it was possible to obtain a mass containing one thousandth of pennicillin and purified from dangerous impurities. This medicine was already ready for injection.

In general, it is worth bothering to obtain penicillin only if you have sufficiently high technology and educated performers. Microscope, vacuum pump, refrigerator, ether and methanol production. Thousands of experiments and hundreds of hours of work by competent chemists.

For a person who finds himself in the Middle Ages, it is much wiser to remember the general rules of hygiene and vaccination methods.

67 comments Penicillin

How necessary is a microscope?

To evaluate the usefulness of a particular mold, you need to see what happens to the pathogenic bacteria near the mold (and isolate the pathogen so you know where to look).

Theoretically, sometimes you can see that a medicine works even without a microscope. The solution was cloudy, with a suspension of microbes, but after the medicine it cleared up - the microbes died and precipitated. But in reality, the solution may remain cloudy with dead microbes, or become transparent with surviving living microbes.

I discovered another interesting request from literature lovers about doctors who got into trouble. You don’t have penicillin, you don’t have a thermometer, you don’t even have aspirin yet.

If the whole problem is in vacuum technology, then the question is in the depth of the vacuum. Medium vacuum can be obtained with a water jet pump. Quite accessible in the Middle Ages.

>> Petri dish sort of like space technology does not require it, so you can do it without a microscope.

Well, you have a piece of glass. They poured a nutrient medium into it. Added a piece of pus. Some specks began to grow in the cup. Is it one microbe or ten? And which one is the causative agent? After using the medicine, the spots changed color, what happened there?

Theoretically, you can do without a microscope. Only instead of a thousand experiments, a million will be needed.

>> And about blood - penicillin works great orally

The drill works orally. And penicillin is APPLIED orally. He gets into digestive system, then into the blood and kills microbes in the blood and tissues. The mechanism of action is no different, but much more medicine is needed, since some of it is not absorbed in the digestive system.

Let me remind you that Fleming himself discovered the bactericidal property directly in a petri dish, without a microscope. And only then I began to study why there was empty space around the mold, not populated by bacteria. And in order to assess the quality of the strain, it is enough to measure the width of this empty space with a ruler.

P.S. There will be a separate article about the Petri dish. It was a kind of mini-revolution in microbiology.

He saw that the already isolated pathogen was dying. How to isolate a pathogen without a microscope? I’m not a biologist, but something tells me that visual identification of a microbe in a microscope is orders of magnitude simpler and faster than all kinds of tests with nutrient media, toxins, etc.

Visual identification is cool. What will you compare the microbe with? Or is it assumed that the missing person remembers the basic pathogenic bacteria in face?

> Conducting microbiological research without a microscope is like sailing across the ocean on a raft. Possible, but impractical.

First of all, “difficult” does not mean “impossible”

And secondly, a simple microscope can be built in the Middle Ages (there will be an article), it’s easier than a spyglass, you just need to melt more or less high-quality glass.

> Well, you have a piece of glass. They poured a nutrient medium into it. Added a piece of pus. Some specks began to grow in the cup. Is it one microbe or ten?

Why do we need to know this? There is not one, and not ten, there are so many of them that it is impossible to count each one personally. Only by the size of the colony.

> And which one is the causative agent?

In the case of penicillin, this is not important - it has a very wide spectrum of action. So you can test it on large quantities bacteria. But it is also possible to isolate a specific pathogen - using several more or less sterile sources, we make cultures and observe colonies of the same type. These colonies will be a test sample of a specific pathogen. Long and tedious, but whatever easier to create microscope in medieval conditions.

>After using the medicine, the spots changed color, what happened there?

Everything is much simpler, and they still do it now. The medicine is applied close to the colony, for example in a ring around it. If there is penicillin, the colony will not grow in the place where it is applied. Or two substrates are prepared, one with an antibiotic, the other without, and the growth rate of colonies is compared.

>> In the case of penicillin, this is not important - it has a very wide spectrum of action. So you can test on a large number of bacteria. But it is also possible to isolate a specific pathogen - using several more or less sterile sources, we make cultures and observe colonies of the same type. These colonies will be a test sample of a specific pathogen.

Many types of mold defend themselves against microbes by releasing certain toxins. Firstly, they are designed to destroy the enemies of mold, not pathogenic bacteria. Secondly, these toxins are mostly harmful to humans.

If we see that mold kills some bacteria, this does not mean that it will kill the pathogens that interest us. And if it kills them, maybe these toxins kill human cells too (I bet that basic testing for toxicity is easier to do with a microscope on samples in vitro than to produce large amounts of toxin and poison volunteers).

>> Long and tedious, but much easier than creating a microscope in medieval conditions.

The newcomer does not know penicillin mold by sight. If he wants to find it, he will have thousands of experiences with different cultures. Maybe we can evaluate how much the presence of a microscope simplifies the work and multiply this coefficient by the tens of thousands of man hours required to carry out these experiments?

>> Doing microbiology in the Middle Ages was generally impractical.

Actually, this article and my comments are aimed at showing that penicillin and antibiotics are a more complicated undertaking than applying mold to a wound.

1. A microscope a la Leeuwenhoek is easier to build than it seems.

2. The problem is not in the microscope, and not in testing, but in a vacuum installation of sufficient productivity. That is, making a vacuum for any device was not a problem even in the Middle Ages, but to create a sufficient volume and quickly is already a task.

What do you think about the introduction of opiate-based painkillers or bish poppy into surgery? A person with drug experience can test his strength in this humane field. You can try to develop the most simple and effective technique to obtain a painkiller such as morphine, you can experiment with ephedrine. This will reduce the pain shock of operations and save many lives. The only question left is to create a syringe or simply rub it into the skin.

Drugs allow you to die beautifully and painlessly, and penicillin allows you to recover. That's the difference.

>> painful shock of operations

Opiates have been known for quite some time, becoming widespread since 18xx.

The attitude was completely different from what it is now. Free sale, whether to get hooked or not is a matter of natural selection.

Everything is clear. Those who like to denounce imperialist England somehow forget that during the Opium Wars, opium was freely sold in London.

Just publish recipes for making drugs on the open Internet... Whoever needs it, let him put it up.

Is penicillin really necessary? Moss contains strong natural antibiotics. For example, Cetraria Icelandic lichen (Icelandic moss) or Usnea lichen (bearded vulture). This is a very strong natural antibiotic, which even in a dilution of 1: kills microbes, and in a stronger concentration destroys the tuberculosis bacillus. Treats tuberculosis sometimes in the most advanced forms.

1: is this probably still the degree of dilution of the antibiotic itself (sodium usninate) and not the lichen?

and it (or rather, auric acid) in dried lichen contains 1-1.5%, in especially rich species up to 8%

But overall, a very interesting object for a visitor.

Icelandic moss is indicated for the treatment of exhausted patients. Used as a decoction. Due to the fact that it contains starch (which forms a gelatinous mass when dissolved), as well as the antibiotic usnic acid, it is used for inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.

Sodium usinate indications for use

For the treatment of wounds, burns, cracks, etc.

Has an antimicrobial (virus-destroying) effect against gram-positive bacteria.

Dosage for use

Externally in the form of a 1% aqueous-alcohol or 0.5% oil solution, also in the form of a solution in glycerin or fir balsam with the addition of a 2% anesthesin solution. Gauze bandages are generously moistened with solutions and applied to the affected skin surface. For powdering, use powder, spending 0.1-0.2 g of product on a wound measuring 16 cm2. Orally in powder form or in a mixture with sulfonamides (1 part sodium usninate with 3 or 5 parts streptocide).

Where did you get this nonsense about the virus-destroying effects of wearing bacteria? Or is this about viruses your personal initiative?

Nicht! It's not me, it came from the internet. 🙂

Moreover, I came across a similar text in 2-3 places - apparently they were copying and pasting from each other.

Well, the scientific nature of this data can be judged by one phrase

>> antimicrobial (destroys viruses)

The same problems are evident - for oral use it must be concentrated. They drink the decoction, but if it _CURED_ tuberculosis, and did not slow down its development, it would be sold for its weight in diamonds.

Yes, only the deaf have never heard of penicillin.

Let's leave aside for now the difficulties of growing and separating from the mixture.

The most important thing is different.

They will not be able to treat epidemics that have been the main scourge of European civilization for many years.

With the exception of funny diseases of course :)

Regarding the majority of mass infections of the past - bacterial and amoebic dysentery, typhus and typhoid fever, leprosy and tuberculosis, measles, smallpox and influenza, and most importantly, the most terrible ones - cholera and plague, epidemics of which wiped out up to half the population of Europe (their pathogens are precisely an additional cell wall that isolates the internal one and prevents penicillin from penetrating inside), it is never effective.

In fact, the only very likely and frequent area of its use for a victim is purulent wounds.

>I'm not a biologist, but something tells me that visual identification of a microbe in a microscope

>orders of magnitude simpler and faster than all kinds of tests with nutrient media, toxins, etc.

How will you paint? By Gram?

By the way, fellow misfits! The inertia of thinking is taking its toll!

Today my wife (a doctor) answered the question of how to make an antibiotic and told wonderful story from the life of the great surgeon Pirogov, which I myself knew, but forgot:

During Crimean War Pirogov himself, I don’t know, invented antibiotics. Because he used moldy orange (or bread, I don’t know for sure) peels to apply to soldiers’ wounds. Survival rates increased very significantly. And this is in the field with the appropriate medical equipment from the mid-19th century.

But Pirogov was a practitioner and did not develop the theory of why the crusts help, which is why Fleming became famous.

That is, the conclusion is that the crusts are not sure that they will help, but ancient bacteria undaunted by antibiotics will only die from mold! A huge help in ancient wars.

Superficial wounds are disinfected with ordinary alcohol or iodine better than with mold. The alcohol is obtained at a time; the distillation cube can be made either from ceramics or from metal. But mold is poorly stored and difficult to store.

The advantage of the antibiotic is that when taken orally it kills bacteria before it kills humans, unlike alcohol and iodine.

What I buy for is what I sell for. Pirogov successfully used this method.

And alcohol has only superficial disinfection; it does not fight inflammation in any way. Iodine cannot be applied to open wounds, it will burn everything (and getting it is also a whole science).

And you don’t need to stock up on mold; just use petri dishes to isolate a suitable strain and grow the spores. During war, in field conditions, it is enough to sow the spores on a suitable surface and apply.

P.S. I’m not saying that it’s better, cleaner and safer, I’m saying that it’s orders of magnitude easier to implement and less scientific/labor-intensive. You don't need a large laboratory with a pharmaceutical plant. It will take a long time for a person to develop to this level.

I really doubt it about fighting inflammation. The concentrations of penicillin there are ridiculous, but they penetrate minimally into tissues and are quickly eliminated.

The decrease in mortality was most likely due to the fact that the wound was not pulled unnecessarily.

I do not recommend treating mold. Those. if you have the right strain, it’s possible, but then you can concentrate it. And at random... From aphalotoxins to who knows what else, there’s a much greater chance of doing harm than helping.

In the field a big difference die from gangrene/peretonitis or have a chance to be cured with the help of mold? It's not a question of safety, it's a question of life and death.

If the victim learns to take penicillin, then there is no need for mold directly.

1. invention and implementation of a microscope, vacuum pump, refrigerator, production of ether and methanol. Thousands of experiments and hundreds of hours of work by competent chemists who need to be found and trained. At the same time, people will die the same way.

2. Or a team of up to 10 chemists who identified the most suitable strain, tested it on animals and went on to save the hopeless with crusts. And in parallel, supported by a practical base, obtain pure penicellin?

It’s not a question, 10 chemists, and in how many years, they can easily select and test a strain. And AFTER this the mold will work (sucks, but at least it’s something).

BEFORE this, such treatment is a probable waste for those who could survive, and absolutely negligible chances for those who are hopeless.

ZY I repeat, after isolating an effective strain, it is not prohibitively difficult to concentrate the antibiotic. Chromatography, electrophoresis... all this can be forgotten in the Middle Ages, fortunately, the activity test is quite simple. But here’s a productive strain... it’s difficult, and there are no guarantees. It may simply not exist in a given area.

Or maybe it would be better to concentrate on the invention of streptocide?

In our country, I remember, he is very... actively used until the 70s.

“Streptocide is an antibiotic with bacteriostatic action. Penetrating into the bacterial cell, it disrupts the chemical processes inside it. And the bacteria loses its ability to reproduce. And the surviving bacteria are attacked by the human immune system.

The most famous names of streptocide are sulfanilamide and white streptocide. Chemical formula streptocide - C6H8O2N2S. Streptocide dissolves well in hot water and almost does not dissolve in cold. A solution of streptocide in dilute hydrochloric acid (HCl) has a cherry-red color.

The spectrum of action of streptocide is wide. It successfully fights E. coli, Vibrio cholera, pathogens of anthrax, diphtheria, plague, influenza, chlamydia, clostridia, etc. Streptocide is effective in the treatment of such serious diseases as meningitis, erysipelas, lobar pneumonia, and sore throat.”

It has already been discussed... sulfonamides are a good material, but how to make a simple synthesis before the era of aniline is unclear.

Someone here promised to offer synthesis from indigo (!), but modestly failed :)

My friend promised me that he would personally synthesize it in the laboratory.

For discussion, a synthesis scheme will suffice :)

I can “cook it in a lab”, the question is - using what? 🙂

It seems that Americans in the 40s of the twentieth century grew the necessary mold on worn leather shoes. Such shoes were even collected in medical institutions. In the USSR, an alternative substrate for growing penicillin mold was found - the peel of an Uzbek melon.

Some kind of urban legend. They grew mold on corn extract.

Regarding raw materials: this seems to have settled down now. And corn, and lactose, and much more. From here http://chemanalytica.com/book/novyy_spravochnik_khimika_i_tekhnologa/06_syre_i_produkty_promyshlennosti_organicheskikh_i_neorganicheskikh_veshchestv_chast_II/5452 “For industrial production antibiotic use a medium with the following composition,%: corn extract (CM) - 0.3; hydrol - 0.5; lactose - 0.3; NH4NO3 - 0.125; Na2SO3 × 5H2O - 0.1; Na2SO4 × 10H2O - 0.05; MgSO4 × 7H2O - 0.025; MnSO4 × 5H2O - 0.002; ZnSO4 - 0.02; KH2PO4 - 0.2; CaCO3 - 0.3; phenylacetic acid - 0.1.

Quite often, sucrose or a mixture of lactose and glucose is used in a 1:1 ratio. In some cases, instead of corn extract, peanut flour, cakes, cottonseed flour and other plant materials are used.” Fleming clearly did not have such a composition.

I will continue http://shkolazhizni.ru/culture/articles/75875/ “The antibacterial effect of mold - the fungus Penicillium - has been known since time immemorial. Mentions of the treatment of purulent diseases with mold can be found in the works of Avicenna (XI century) and Philip von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus (XVI century). In Russia, back in the 1860s in St. Petersburg, a heated discussion unfolded between doctors: some doctors are confident in the danger of green mold for humans, considering it a pathogenic microorganism, while others, including students of the outstanding doctor and scientist Sergei Petrovich Botkin, Vyacheslav Avksentievich Manassein and Alexey Gerasimovich Polotebnov consider molds to be harmless. To substantiate their arguments, scientists conduct a series of experiments with green mold (in other words, with the fungi Penicillium glaucum) and in 1871, almost simultaneously, they observe the same result: in a liquid environment where there are mold fungi, bacteria do not grow. The therapist Manassein would later report that in his experiment he had convincingly proven the ability of mold to inhibit the growth of bacteria. Polotebnov will do more practical conclusion: fungi of the genus Penicillium are capable of delaying the development of pathogens of human skin diseases, which he talks about in 1873 in his scientific work "On the pathological significance of green mold." It proposed treating infected wounds and ulcers by treating them with a liquid in which mold had previously grown. It must be said that Polotebnov tested the miraculous properties of green mold more than once - first on hopeless patients, saving lives after lives, and then in everyday practice - in the treatment of purulent abscesses. And although the scientific dispute was eventually resolved in favor of mold (doctors stopped suspecting it as a pathogen), these works at that time, unfortunately, did not receive proper evaluation and further development. What is mold? These are plant organisms, tiny fungi that grow in damp places. Externally, mold resembles a felt mass of white, green, brown and black. Mold grows from spores - microscopic living organisms invisible to the naked eye. Mycology - the science of fungi - knows thousands of varieties of mold. In 1897, a young military doctor from Lyon named Ernest Duchesne made a “discovery” while observing how Arab stable boys used mold from still damp saddles to treat wounds on the backs of horses rubbed by those same saddles. Duchesne carefully examined the taken mold, identified it as Penicillium glaucum, tested it on guinea pigs to treat typhus and discovered its destructive effect on the bacteria Escherichia coli. This was the first ever clinical trial of what would soon become world-famous penicillin. The young man presented the results of his research in the form of a doctoral dissertation, insistently proposing to continue work in this area, but the Pasteur Institute in Paris did not even bother to confirm receipt of the document - apparently because Duchenne was only twenty-three years old. But the problem was how to use not the mold itself, but the substance through which its miraculous properties manifest themselves. Therefore, all these experiments cannot be considered genuine discoveries of a new class of antibiotic drugs. In 1928, Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming discovered that a strain of the fungal mold Penicillium notatum (it was originally called Penicillium due to the fact that under a microscope its spore-bearing legs looked like tiny brushes. When growing in a nutrient medium, it secretes a substance with a powerful antibacterial effect, the action of the fungus does not apply to all microbes, but mainly to pathogenic bacteria, and concluded that “the fungus produces an antibacterial substance that affects some microbes and not others.” At the same time, he established that even in large doses it is not toxic to warm-blooded animals. Since the mold he worked with bore the Latin name Penicillium notatum, he named the antibacterial substance he obtained penicillin. Fleming's assistant, Dr. Stuart Graddock, who fell ill with sinusitis, was the first person to try the effect of the drug on himself. A small amount of the substance was injected into his maxillary cavity, and within three hours his health improved significantly. On September 13, 1929, at a meeting of the Medical Research Club at the University of London, Alexander Fleming reported on his research. This day is considered to be the birthday of penicillin, but it was still very far from the moment when it began to be used in medicine. Fleming, not being a chemist, could neither isolate it from the nutrient medium nor determine its structure. In addition, the magical substance was unstable and quickly lost its activity. Three times, at Fleming’s request, biochemists began to purify the substance from foreign impurities, but were unsuccessful: the fragile molecule was destroyed, losing its properties. Fleming considered it unacceptable to use dirty penicillin for internal injections, fearing for the health of patients. In 1929, the scientist published a paper about his discovery, but before new era in medicinal medicine of the twentieth century - the era of antibiotics - there was still more than a decade left. In 1938, Oxford University professor, pathologist and biochemist Howard Florey attracted Ernst Boris Chain to his work. Cheyne's Jewish family emigrated from Mogilev in Russia to Germany, where Ernst received a higher education in chemistry and then studied the biochemistry of enzymes. When the Nazis came to power, Chain, being a Jew and a man of leftist views, emigrated to England. However, he failed to get his mother and sister to leave Germany. Both died in 1942 in a concentration camp. All this determined Cheyne’s sympathy for our country and later played an important role not only in work on penicillin, but also in the fate of my father. Studying works on antimicrobial drugs on Flory's advice, Chain found the first description of penicillin published by Fleming and began research on them. practical application, he was able to obtain crude penicillin in quantities sufficient for the first biological tests, first on animals and then in the clinic. After a year of painful experiments to isolate and purify the product of capricious mushrooms, the first 100 mg of pure penicillin was obtained. The first patient (a policeman with blood poisoning) could not be saved - the accumulated supply of penicillin was not enough. The antibiotic was quickly excreted by the kidneys. Chain involved other specialists in the work: bacteriologists, chemists, doctors. The so-called Oxford Group was formed. By this time the Second World War. In the summer of 1940, the danger of invasion loomed over Great Britain. The Oxford group decides to hide the mold spores by soaking the linings of their jackets and pockets in broth. Chain said: “If they kill me, the first thing you do is grab my jacket.” In 1941, for the first time in history, a person with blood poisoning was saved from death - he was a 15-year-old teenager. "

Part No. 3 http://1k.com.ua/377/details/9/1 “... the penicillin program in miniature resembled the “Manhattan Project” in creating atomic bomb. All work was strictly classified, leading scientists, designers and industrialists were involved in the case. As a result, the Americans managed to develop an effective technology for deep fermentation. The first $200 million plant was built at a rapid pace in less than a year, with the batteries of its huge mold fermenters resembling uranium enrichment equipment. Following this, new factories were built in the USA and Canada.

... Already in March 1945, penicillin appeared in American pharmacies.

Fleming felt awkward at the award ceremony because he believed that he was unworthy of such high honors. He often repeated: “I am accused of having invented penicillin. But no man could invent it, because this substance is created by nature. I didn’t invent penicillin, I just drew people’s attention to it and gave it a name.” Nevertheless, in 1999, British doctors ranked Fleming first in the list of the most significant figures in medical science of the 20th century.

The history of penicillin production in the USSR is also surrounded by many legends and myths. .. Deputy People's Commissar of Health of the USSR A.G. Natradze said half a century later: “We sent a delegation abroad to purchase a license for the production of penicillin in depth. They asked a very high price - $10 million. We consulted with the Minister of Foreign Trade A.I. Mikoyan and agreed to the purchase. Then they told us that they had made a mistake in the calculations and that the price would be $20 million. We again discussed the issue with the government and decided to pay this price as well. Then they said that they would not sell us a license even for $30 million.”

What could be done under these conditions? Follow the example of the British and prove their priority in the production of penicillin. Soviet newspapers were full of reports about the outstanding successes of microbiologist Zinaida Ermolyeva, who managed to produce a domestic analogue of penicillin called crustozin, and, as one would expect, it is much better than the American one. From these messages it was not difficult to understand that American spies stole the secret of the production of crustozin, because in their capitalist jungle they would never have thought of it. Later, Veniamin Kaverin (his brother, virologist scientist Lev Zilber, was Ermolyeva’s husband) published the novel “ Open book", telling about how the main character, whose prototype was Ermolyeva, despite the resistance of enemies and bureaucrats, gave the people the miraculous krustozin.

However, this is nothing more than artistic fiction. Using the support of Rosalia Zemlyachka (“the fury of the red terror,” as Solzhenitsyn called her, she studied for some time at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lyon, and therefore considered herself an unsurpassed expert in medicine), Zinaida Ermolyeva, based on the fungus Penicillium crustosum, really established the production of crustozin, but the quality is domestic penicillin was inferior to American. In addition, Ermolyeva’s penicillin was produced by surface fermentation in glass “mattresses”. And although they were installed wherever possible, the volume of penicillin production in the USSR at the beginning of 1944 was approximately 1000 times less than in the USA.

The end result was that the technology of deep fermentation, bypassing the Americans, was purchased from Ernst Chain, after which the Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene of the Red Army, whose director was Nikolai Kopylov, mastered this technology and put it into production. Penicillium chrysogenum was used as the main production strain. In 1945, after testing domestic penicillin, a large team led by Kopylov was awarded the Stalin Prize. As for Zinaida Ermolyeva, she was removed from her post as director of the Penicillin Institute, and her semi-handicraft krustozin happily sank into oblivion.”

In fact, penicillin is not that difficult to grow and extract at home. For extraction you will need Ethyl Acetate (made from alcohol and vinegar - so a moonshine still is the first thing for a newcomer). detailed instructions here https://www.doomandbloom.net/making-penicillin-at-home/ - if according to a simplified scheme, without preparing a lactose nutrient mixture - it can be replaced with simply boiled broth from lemons (though it is better to grow mold on citrus fruits). After it grows in solution (it should change color, usually yellow), you need to acidify it a little with an acid (preferably hydrochloric, but I think citric will do), to pH 2.2 (you will have to determine by taste, but this is very sour - pure lemon juice has just such acidity) and add ethyl acetate, dry it - and penicillin (acetate) will precipitate in the form of crystals...

Actually, this resource has a reputation for advertising, a lot of scams. From homeopathy for survival (indirect advertising, sale of goods), to fake receipt of penicillin, like here. Penicillium chrysogenum, or rather its strains bred by humans, which produce more product, is right there in the picture - Penicillium digitatum lives in the soil of citrus cultivation areas.

Well, actually, that’s exactly how Alexander Fleming opened it, leaving a bunch of unwashed Petri dishes and a half-eaten tangerine. After which I went on vacation...

If you can offer something better other than “this will never work” - we listen to you.

Yes, penicillin will have a bunch of impurities and you definitely can’t inject it. However, it will almost certainly work as a folk remedy, especially if there is nothing left but death...

Diggins F (1999). " True story the discovery of penicillin, with a refutation of misinformation in the literature." Br J Biomed Sci. 56 (2): 83-93. PMID

sci-hub doesn't download. Can you tell me where to get it?

The true history of the discovery of penicillin, with refutation of the misinformation in the literature.

I read the title through a search, in the search there are open resources for the article, I don’t remember where.

This is what I found, but somehow the text doesn’t come across.

It still works through a proxy

Marasmic acid is an antibiotic first obtained from the honey fungus (Marasmius oreades). Quite simply synthesized without a vacuum pump with a huge yield of 50% for pharmacology http://chemistry-chemists.com/forum/download/file.php?id=63988

Well, where is the development of the topic? Just a couple of articles and a dissertation from a search engine is not enough, after all.

Offer specifics - what, against what, from what and how, and a link to the pages will give the statement a gloss).

Marasmic acid, despite the fact that it was discovered as an antibiotic in the 1970s, has been poorly studied. The only mention of her pharmacological properties that methicillin-resistant St. aureus can be treated. And this is already serious, starting from acne on the face and ending with pneumonia and sepsis. Now this is treated with a combination of 2 or more antibiotics. Also, its advantage is that simple synthesis of marasmic acid is possible without advanced instruments and cultivation of bio-raw materials. That is, for a random chemist it is an ideal antibiotic.

» poorly studied. The only mention of its pharmacological properties is that it can treat methicillin-resistant Styphylococcus aureus."

So has anyone conducted clinical trials? Or at least a full-fledged pre-clinic? If not, then recommend it to the person you come across - hmm...

The name, again, is a hint...)

Let's still port proven technologies, otherwise cold thermonuclear fusion will go next)

// despite being discovered as an antibiotic in the 1970s, poorly studied

All that remains is to understand why it is not being studied, given that billions are circulating in the drug industry, and microbes are acquiring resistance.

Because the choice between an antibiotic that will be taken for two weeks and which will become useless in a year, or an antidepressant that will be consumed 365 days a year for the rest of your life is obvious.

What amazing conspiracy nonsense. If only for this reason, against the backdrop of current antibiotic resistance, the new antibiotic is a real goldmine.

And, by the way, a very good example of the work of the main feature of conspiracy theory as such - the belief that a huge number of people for some reason secret reasons acts against its own interests...

“In fact” is half conspiracy theory and sad truth...

In recent years, in the same YuSovshchina they have been trying to rectify the situation with the fact that the development of new antibiotics has really become unprofitable. So far without much success. High risk, low gain... And it’s not entirely clear where to run. Opening a new class, and not falling under non-specific resistance, is quite a challenge. Maybe packing old substances into nano, completely changing the bioavailability and pharmacokinetics... but there are problems there too.

Perhaps the cheapest and easiest to produce antibiotics are kept in reserve for emergencies. Research on the pharmacology of marasmic acid dates back to 1949 http://www.pnas.org/content/35/7/343.full.pdf

Conspiracy in a sense. Optimistic. 🙂

There is a concept of reserve antibiotics; there is data for them from clinical trials or practice.

And there are substances for which someone once showed biological activity... it seems... some...)). But this does not make them antibiotics in the sense of drugs. And there are tens of thousands of such substances “on the shelf.” Some of them will someday become a medicine, but no one knows what, when and in what capacity).

Any conspiracy theory is an optimistic thing. The conspiracy theorist believes that at least someone knows where everything is heading and has the resources for conscious maneuvering.)

penicillin when administered orally (that is, through the mouth) decomposes in the gastrointestinal tract. need a syringe. The “penicillin” that comes in tablets is a synthetic drug. You can't do that.

It was relatively simple for the 19th century to develop nitrofuran antibiotics. (furosalidone, furodonin, 5 nok) they are excellent for treating some intestinal infections. and for the treatment of urinary organs.

The syringe replacement is simple. Any needle + blade of grass, at least. Plus, bioavailability can be changed with capsules.

As for nitrofurans, we’ll discuss the details of the technology that came into the studio.

Nitrofurans are classified as antimicrobials, but are not antibiotics. To synthesize nitrofurans, you first need furfural, which is highly toxic https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%83%D1%80%D1%84%D1%83%D1%80%D0 %BE%D0%BB

Idea for an article

in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in its chemical. basement lab extracted insulin from buffalo pancreas. Here's the diagram:

And then she put it on stream and started letting stray dogs take insulin.

She saved 200 people in this way throughout the war.

It is worth noting that the mold that can easily be found on products is not always penicillin or it.

What is mold? It is a multicellular fungus, a living organism whose spores are distributed everywhere. They can be found in the air, on the surface of walls or objects, as well as on food. Mold can cause serious harm to human health, but by growing it in the laboratory, it is possible to obtain components for a number of medications. Many lovers of biology and the animal world are interested in the question of how to grow mold yourself? This is not difficult to do; if a certain microclimate is maintained, the spores will spread very quickly.

How to create favorable conditions for mold growth?

The structure of mold cells is similar to animal cells. Like any living microorganism, it requires food and a certain habitat for successful reproduction.

Nutrition. Mushrooms cannot produce food on their own, so for normal life they require an external source of food. In this, mushrooms are similar to representatives.

mold water lactose corn starch

It is worth noting that the mold that can be easily removed.

The idea of using microbes to fight germs dates back to the 19th century. It was already clear to scientists that in order to combat wound complications, we must learn to paralyze the microbes that cause these complications, and that microorganisms can be killed with their help. In particular, Louis Pasteur discovered that anthrax bacilli are killed by the action of certain other microbes. In 1897, Ernest Duchesne used the mold, i.e. the properties of penicillin, to treat typhus in guinea pigs.

If a blue crust appears on the bread, the thrifty housewife will carefully cut it off and put the rest on the table, confident that she is showing concern for her family. And if he notices black fluff on a carrot, wash it thoroughly, peel it until it turns red, and put it in soup or salad.

But is all mold on food healthy? How to distinguish the one that is edible from the one that can lead to the grave? World of News learned about this.

NOT ALL MOLD IS A CURE

Penicillin is an antibiotic whose appearance has saved more than one million human lives. Is it the same penicillin that grows on vegetables, fruits, and bread? Not at all! “Antibiotics are made only from a certain type of penicillium fungus, which inhibits the growth of harmful microorganisms. It should be remembered that penicillin is also a mycotoxin and it is also harmful to humans, it’s just that when treating serious diseases, the benefits of its use outweigh the harm. In addition, natural penicillin is subjected to careful processing and...

Beginning of the 10th century. The world, unarmed in the face of deadly bacteria, is shaken by epidemics of “Spanish flu” (flu), scarlet fever, diphtheria, and in Russia - anthrax, malaria, cholera, syphilis, Asian cholera, and typhus. Infections cause infant mortality - every fourth child dies before the age of one (remember the family of L.N. Tolstoy). Thanks to this figure, the average resident of Russia lives at the turn of the century only up to 32 years, in Europe - up to 45. Inflammation from a simple cut on the lip sometimes led to death (the case of A.N. Scriabin), killing half a million Russians every year. Hospitals were losing wounded due to post-operative sepsis.

The use of antibiotics has pushed into the background many previously fatal diseases (tuberculosis, dysentery, cholera, purulent infections, pneumonia and many others). With the help of antibiotics, infant mortality has been significantly reduced. Antibiotics are of great benefit in surgery, helping the body weakened by the operation to cope.

In December 1940, he accidentally scratched his face with a rose thorn. By the end of the month, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus infections had developed and he was hospitalized. Despite the doctors' efforts, the disease progressed and Albert's entire head was covered with abscesses. To reduce the pain, he even had to remove one eye.

The mood of the time can be easily understood from the decision made in the laboratory: if invaders invade Oxford, all equipment and documentation for the production of penicillin must be destroyed.

How to grow penicillin at home

In conditions of extreme survival, any wound can take months to heal, frostbite will certainly lead to gangrene, and mild inflammation can cause blood poisoning, so you don’t even need to mention such serious diseases as pneumonia.

Using homemade penicillin at home is only possible in a truly extreme situation.

Natural antibiotics, herbs

However, nature has taken good care of us, providing a wide range of natural antibiotics and medicinal herbs, the magical effects of which, unfortunately, today are mainly known only to shamans and village grannies.

There is no misfortune that this natural antibiotic with a very wide spectrum of action cannot help with. It will strengthen the immune system, heal wounds with burns, frostbite and cracks, kill all types of fungi, even meat coated with this unique waste product of bees can not spoil after a long stay in the scorching sun. Do you have a problem? Propolis will solve it. Therefore, if, finding yourself in an extreme situation, you still decide to climb into the hive with the bees and take their honey, do not forget to take propolis at the same time (it smells like incense when burning). Depending on the location of the disease, there are several ways to prepare propolis-based medicines at home:

Ointment: To make a medicinal ointment based on propolis, we will need 15-20 grams of propolis for 100 grams of any oily base (olive or any other unrefined vegetable oil is best), after which the mixture must be boiled in a water bath for an hour, stirring occasionally with a wooden with a stick. You can replace the oil base butter by adding 5 ml of water, in this case the boiling time is reduced to 15 minutes. Before use, it is advisable to filter the solution through 2 layers of gauze. Store in a dark container in a dark, cool place.

Oral tincture: Let 10 grams of propolis steep in 100 ml of water (50 degrees C) for 24 hours and you will get a pleasant-smelling yellowish aqueous solution with a shelf life of up to one week in a cool place. The daily safe dose is 2 tablespoons 4 times a day an hour before meals.

And may the power of the bees be with you.

Treatment with penicillin, which was the first antibiotic discovered and was widely used at the beginning of the last century, will get rid of a bacterial infection or kill you if you are allergic to it. However, finding himself far from the nearest settlement and becoming seriously ill (not viral disease), may be the only natural antibiotic that can still save your life.

Instructions: To get penicillin, you don’t have to go far, just open the refrigerator and find cheese with green mold, but it is not a fact that this mold will be a penicillin fungus, and even if it is, the concentration of antibiotic in it is unlikely to be enough for used as a treatment for bacterial infections, otherwise in case of illness, doctors would simply stupidly prescribe to eat mold. If there are no other options, and even magic propolis did not help you, you can get penicillin as follows:

Take a piece of bread or a slice of citrus and leave it to deteriorate in an environment of 21 degrees Celsius. After the greenish-bluish mold appears, cut the bread or lemon into pieces, placing them in a pre-sterilized conical flask, in the dark at 21 degrees Celsius, for five days.

It is very likely that after five days without antibiotics for a bacteriological disease, you are unlikely to need penicillin, however, nevertheless, prepare a nutrient medium for future mold colonies by dissolving it in half a liter cold water the following ingredients in the order given here: 44 g Lactose (can be replaced with glucose, sucrose, etc., as long as they are supplied continuously), 25 g corn starch, 3 g sodium nitrate, 0.25 g magnesium sulfate, 0.5 g monocalcium phosphate, 2.75 g glucose monohydrate, 0.044 g zinc sulfate and 0.044 g manganese sulfate. Now add cold water so that the total volume is 1 liter, and use perchloric acid to adjust the pH of the culture between 5.0 and 5.5.

Pour the nutrient medium into bottles, such as milk bottles, sterilize them, then add a teaspoon of mold spores. To obtain penicillin, all that remains is to let the bottles brew for 7 days, under the same conditions, then filter the liquid with the nutrient medium and freeze it as soon as possible to avoid decomposition of the finished penicillin.

It is better to treat with penicillin immediately and ONLY if there is no suitable alternative. As a strong antibiotic, it is capable of combating both blood poisoning and any bacteriological pathogen, but one must be aware that the penicillin obtained in the manner described above will contain admixtures of toxic types of mold, and it is very likely that these strains can slow down, and or even completely prevent the release of penicillin, which will lead to even greater bacteriological infection of your body. Using homemade penicillin at home is only possible in a truly extreme situation.

It is dangerous to list all the healing effects of this miraculous natural antibiotic herbs, otherwise, being impressed, you will go to Everyday life for St. John's wort and water. Antimicrobial, anthelmintic, wound healing, hemostatic, tonic and anti-inflammatory, St. John's wort has a phytocidal effect, destroying staphylococci, streptococci, pathogens of tuberculosis and dysentery. With the tincture, everything is simple, dry crushed St. John's wort makes an excellent tea, but do not overuse it too much, you may develop intolerance, which can lead to very disastrous consequences, it is better to drink tea in the evening from Ceylon, and save St. John's wort for serious cases, but to make it on based on this medicinal ointment, you just need to mix 4 parts of melted butter with 1 part of an alcohol tincture based on St. John's wort (1 part of St. John's wort is infused in vodka for a couple of weeks).

Hello dear readers of the blog www.site! Today I will tell you about something that you have probably thought about more than once in everyday life, when someone in your household got sick. We will talk about herbal antibiotics.

We will learn how to replace herbal antibiotics made using special technology with antibiotics prepared at home from plants.

There is hardly a person among us who has not experienced the effects of conventional medical antibiotics. Doctors prescribe them to us for pneumonia, cystitis, sore throat, purulent wounds, infectious and other diseases.

Once upon a time, antibiotics saved humanity from many serious diseases, but later it became clear that they also had side effects that were no less significant for the body. Therefore, under some circumstances, people began to look for a replacement for them in order to overcome the disease and not harm the body.

As we already know, each synthetic drug has its own indications and contraindications, of which antibiotics, unfortunately, have more. But we must not forget about Mother Nature, who created plants with antibacterial properties to replace synthetic antibiotics.

Herbal antibiotics are practically free of the disadvantages that are present in synthetic ones. The chemical nature of herbal medicines in their composition is much better suited to the human body, since over the course of many years, in the course of long evolution, it has already adapted to their absorption.

They are more easily included in the process of life and are not rejected by the human body. Herbal medicines do not provide side effects, have a milder effect, less toxic, and are not addictive.

Plant antibiotics have a fairly wide spectrum of action, and most importantly, they are active against strains of microorganisms and viruses that have already become resistant to antibiotics. In addition, many plants not only do not cause weakening protective forces body, but, on the contrary, strengthen human immunity.

List of herbal antibiotics

Various plant substances have antibiotic properties, including essential oils(phytoncides), alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosides and others. One of the first effective plant antibiotics was quinine.

During Soviet times in Russia there were active search plants with pronounced antimicrobial and protistocidal (against protozoa) effects. As a result, a number of highly active substances with antibiotic properties were isolated. The most famous of them are novoimanin, sangviritrin, sodium usninate. Here we will study each of them in more detail.

In addition, antimicrobial properties have been found in such widely known plants as: garlic, onion, horseradish, radish, hot peppers, turmeric, cloves, bearberry, lingonberry, thyme, celandine, wormwood, bergenia, calendula, birch (leaves and buds) ), poplar (buds), salvia officinalis (leaf), Cetraria Icelandica, usnea and others.

Novoimanin

Novoimanin was developed at the Institute of Microbiology and Virology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine from St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum L.). You can read about the properties of St. John's wort in my article.

It is obtained by extracting the herb St. John's wort with acetone. Then, followed by removal of chlorophyll from the extract using regular activated charcoal. Aqueous preparations of St. John's wort (infusions, decoctions) do not have an antibacterial effect.

Novoimanin is active against gram-positive bacteria; we suppress staphylococcus strains that are resistant to penicillin even at a dilution of 1:1000000 (1 μg/ml). It has been found to stimulate immunogenesis.

It is prescribed as an external remedy for abscesses, phlegmon, infected wounds, 2nd and 3rd degree burns, ulcers, pyoderma, mastitis, rhinitis, pharyngitis, and sinusitis.

At home, prepare a tincture of St. John's wort with vodka, which is also a fairly strong antibiotic. It is used externally and internally for bacterial infections of the intestines (dysbacteriosis, diarrhea, dysentery, food toxic infections) and the genitourinary system (prostatitis, cystitis, urethritis, pyelonephritis), etc.

To do this, you need to take 50 g of dry crushed grass (preferably leaves with flowers without stems), pour 0.5 liter of vodka, leave for two weeks in a dark place. Take 1-2 teaspoons (up to 1 tablespoon) with a small amount water three times a day twenty to thirty minutes before meals. The course of treatment, depending on the disease and its severity, ranges from 2 days to two weeks.

I also recommend watching this video in other ways. useful qualities St. John's wort has not described here:

Sangviritrin was developed in the 50s of the last century at the All-Russian Research Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (VILAR). It is the sum of the bisulfates of two alkaloids: sanguinarine and chelerethrine, isolated from the herb Macleaia cordata and Macleaia parctifolida, growing only in China.

Sangviritrin has a wide spectrum of antimicrobial activity. At home, it can be replaced with a tincture of dried celandine roots in vodka, since macleia is not found in Russia, and celandine contains the same alkaloids. It is prepared in the same way as St. John's wort tincture.

It’s even better to infuse fresh celandine roots in 96% alcohol for 15 days at the rate of 30 g of roots per 100 ml of alcohol.

This tincture is used as an external remedy in the form of applications, lotions and rinses for infectious and inflammatory diseases of the skin, mucous membranes of bacterial and fungal etiology, for periodontitis, aphthous stomatitis, as well as other diseases of the oral mucosa, middle ear and external auditory canal, sore throat , long-term non-healing wounds and ulcers.

To avoid burns, the tincture for applications is diluted with three parts of water.

Treatment is carried out until the symptoms of the disease disappear completely. To rinse, dilute 1 teaspoon of tincture in ½ cup of warm water.

Sodium usinate

Sodium usinate is obtained from the Usnea dasypoga lichen. It is active against Staphylococcus aureus, various streptococci, pneumococci and tubercle bacilli. Externally used for the treatment of purulent processes, fresh wounds and infected wound surfaces, varicose and trophic ulcers, as well as for traumatic osteomyelitis and burns of 2 and 3 degrees.

Icelandic centraria, or Icelandic moss (Cetraria islandica), has a similar effect. About everyone beneficial properties I wrote about Icelandic centraria.

Conducted in last years Studies have found that an aqueous extract of Icelandic moss has antibacterial activity against a number of pathogenic bacteria, including Helicobacter pylori - one of the factors of gastric and duodenal ulcers, as well as Koch's bacillus - the causative agent of tuberculosis.

Clinical trials have proven the effectiveness of using cetraria decoction as a gargle to reduce inflammation and suppress oral infections in patients with postoperative obstruction of the nasal passages.

Thanks to its emollient and expectorant effect due to its rich content of mucous substances, Icelandic moss is a good remedy for bronchitis with painful cough, pulmonary tuberculosis, whooping cough, bronchial asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Externally, decoctions of this lichen are used for washing and lotions for purulent wounds, skin ulcers, pustular rashes, boils, and burns.

At home, a decoction is prepared from these lichens, which has a pronounced antibiotic effect.

For this, 1 tbsp. pour a spoonful of crushed raw materials into two glasses of boiling water, boil for 30 minutes, leave until cool, strain. Take 0.5 - 2/3 tbsp up to 4 times a day 30 minutes before meals. They are treated over a course of treatment ranging from 2 weeks to several months, depending on the severity of the disease.

But the most powerful antibiotic effect of the plants studied today is Sophora yellowish, also known under other names: Sophora yellowish and Sophora angustifolia. It can be classified as a broad-spectrum antibiotic, since there are practically no pathogenic bacteria that could resist this plant.

At the same time, unlike chemical drugs, it has no side effects and does not suppress beneficial microflora in the human body.

Externally, a tincture or infusion of the roots is usually used.

The tincture is prepared with vodka in a ratio of 1:10, that is, for 0.5 liters of vodka, take 50 grams of dry crushed roots, leave for two weeks, and filter.

For skin diseases, use undiluted tincture, and for rinsing and douching, use one tbsp. l. tinctures are diluted in one glass of water.

To prepare the infusion:

You will need one tablespoon of crushed dry Sophora roots, which is poured with one glass of boiling water and left to cool. Then filter.

This is where I end the article, and I hope the knowledge gained will definitely be useful to you. After all, herbal antibiotics are much safer than synthetic ones, which can sometimes do much more harm than good.

Propolis

Ointment: To make a medicinal ointment based on propolis, we will need 15-20 grams of propolis for 100 grams of any oily base (olive or any other unrefined vegetable oil is best), after which the mixture must be boiled in a water bath for an hour, stirring occasionally with a wooden with a stick. You can replace the oily base with butter by adding 5 ml of water, in which case the boiling time is reduced to 15 minutes. Before use, it is advisable to filter the solution through 2 layers of gauze. Store in a dark container in a dark, cool place.

And may the power of the bees be with you.

Penicillin

Treatment with penicillin, which was the first antibiotic discovered and was widely used at the beginning of the last century, will get rid of a bacterial infection or kill you if you are allergic to it. However, if you find yourself far from the nearest settlement and become seriously ill (not with a viral disease), this may be the only natural antibiotic that can still save your life.

How to obtain penicillin.

It is very likely that after five days without antibiotics for a bacteriological disease, you are unlikely to need penicillin, however, nevertheless, prepare a nutrient medium for future mold colonies by dissolving the following ingredients in half a liter of cold water in the sequence indicated here: 44 grams of Lactose (you can replace with glucose, sucrose, etc., while ensuring their continuous supply), 25 g corn starch, 3 g sodium nitrate, 0.25 g magnesium sulfate, 0.5 g monocalcium phosphate, 2.75 g glucose monohydrate, 0.044 g zinc sulfate and 0.044 manganese sulfate. Now add cold water so that the total volume is 1 liter, and use perchloric acid to adjust the pH of the culture between 5.0 and 5.5.

Healing herbs

St. John's wort

It is dangerous to list all the healing effects of this miraculous natural antibiotic herb, otherwise, being impressed, you will switch to St. John's wort and water in everyday life. Antimicrobial, anthelmintic, wound healing, hemostatic, tonic and anti-inflammatory, St. John's wort has a phytocidal effect, destroying staphylococci, streptococci, pathogens of tuberculosis and dysentery. With the tincture, everything is simple, dry crushed St. John's wort makes an excellent tea, but do not overuse it too much, you may develop intolerance, which can lead to very disastrous consequences, it is better to drink tea in the evening from Ceylon, and save St. John's wort for serious cases, but to make it on based on this medicinal ointment, you just need to mix 4 parts of melted butter with 1 part of an alcohol tincture based on St. John's wort (1 part of St. John's wort is infused in vodka for a couple of weeks).