February
17
The Forgotten Cure (Chapters 1-4)
- D’Herelle had took samples from patients from the war who suffered from dysentery, took the bacteria cultures and tested them out onto agar plates. He noticed that there were clear spots on the plate not just from dysentery patients, but also from locusts. He later made a filtrate, a test tube containing bacterial cells from his samples. During these experiments he saw that the dysentery bacteria “dissolved like sugar in water.” He later found out that there could be something that can infect bacteria. He also used this discovery to prove that his dysentery patient can recovered from it, which one patient did in fact, led to a wide discovery and a hunt for more bacteriophages from different places in the world.
- D’Herelle and Eliava were both hard workers that laid their foundation for the future bacteriophage institute. The co workers said that D’Herelle was very hard working and would always arrive on time each day. They said that he was a “virtuoso” and insisted on doing everything with his own hands. This shows that he is very diligent in his work and is a perfectionist. Eliava was hardworking like D’Herelle in terms of the research. Sadly Eliva and his wife supported the wrong side of the Russians and were eventually executed.
- War encourage the hunt for bacteriophages because many of the soldiers suffered from diseases and plaque spread among the people. Soldiers are needed to continue the war and the government needed a strong army, a cure is needed. Since the discovery of bacteriophages and its effects on bacteria cells, phage therapy was created for treatments. Politics had its pros and cons about phage therapy. In Elivas’ casem he used politics to help fund research, but also got him executed.
- Antibiotics came around and eventually won favor over bacteriophages. Due to new technology and research, everyone started to use more antibiotics than phage therapy.
- Delbruck and Luria worked on x-ray crystallography which lead to their interest in bacteriophages. They later joined Phage group. They also discovered the replication mechanism and the structure of phages with other members. The group members’ interest in phages started to fade away as they wanted to examine larger organisms. Therefore, the phage biology started to die out.