Word: staphs
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...Staph," as medical men nickname the germs, cause the commonest and most minor bacterial infections-but also the most dangerous. They are found in boils and in the pus of infected wounds. They may cause pus-filled blisters all over the body of the newborn, and fast-spreading diarrhea. From the eyes (conjunctivitis) they can spread to bone (osteomyelitis). If staph spread to the inner surface of the heart chambers, they can cause heart failure and death. In the lungs they are a potent source of pneumonia; many of the pneumonia deaths following Asian flu are laid to staph...
Where They Come From. Why has the staph menace grown so great? Part of it is relative: other germs, once equally common and deadly, have been tamed. Part of it is that physicians, surgeons and hospital staffs have become too confident: relying on their antibiotics, they are careless about general cleanliness and even surgical asepsis (TIME, April 1). But most of the trouble is in the nature of the beast itself: Staphylococcus aureus has the greatest capacity of any known disease germ for developing strains that are resistant to one antibiotic after another...
...morning in 1928, Dr. Alexander Fleming looked at a little glass dish in which he had been growing some staphylococci (the germs that flourish in boils) and saw that the culture was "spoiled." A kind of claim-jumping mold had moved in and started its own colonies among the staph. A less observant scientist, or one more fussy about keeping a tidy laboratory, would have thrown out the adulterated growth. But Fleming's keen blue eye noticed a peculiarity: around each patch of mold growth was a bare ring where the staph had not been overgrown or crowded...