|
|
Bacteria have flourished on the earth for over three billion years. They were the first life forms on the planet.
As many as 28% of hospitalized patients requiring mechanical ventilators to help them breathe (for more than 48 hours) will develop ventilator-associated pneumonia. Current therapy involves intravenous antibiotics, but new antibiotics that can be inhaled (and more directly treat the infection) are being developed.
Human kidneys will clean about 1 million gallons of blood in an average lifetime.
Most childhood vaccines are 90–99% effective in preventing disease. Side effects are rarely serious.
Cocaine was isolated in 1860 and first used as a local anesthetic in 1884. Its first clinical use was by Sigmund Freud to wean a patient from morphine addiction. The fictional character Sherlock Holmes was supposed to be addicted to cocaine by injection.