<DrumBeat: May 10, 2008 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: May 11, 2008>

208 comments on Rising Energy Costs and the Future of Hospital Work

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cjwirth on May 10, 2008 - 4:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

When one has an intestinal infection, very common where I live in Mexico, and nothing else works, some cillan will work. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, what you say holds for nasty hospital infections, but most of the same old antibiotics work for intestinal and most infections here in Mexico for many years, like chloromycetin for intestinal infections. And this is something the medical professions can work on, versus the latest pharmaceutical innovation on how to keep someone who is dying of xyz alive for 10 more minutes.

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BaSE on May 10, 2008 - 8:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Do you recommend a book for home-making penicillin? It should out-line quantities and the minimum refinement steps, and how to determine dosage and length of time for medicating and the strength of the penicillin. It should also talk about side effects, possible reactions, and other pitfalls that could occur such as breathing in the spores or contaminations.

Thanks, Ben

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BaSE on May 11, 2008 - 12:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This site shows a fermentation process to make small quantities of penicillin. It doesn't address the problem of starting with a suitable penicillin strain or how to deal with the problem of foaming due to corn steep. Also make sure you have plenty of lactose on hand and don't forget the freeze dryer. Not as easy as making beer by any walk of the imagination.

http://eschatonmanagement.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-make-penicillin-ch...

And here's a pretty good history of its development. This shows how difficult making penicillin really was. Fleming who discovered it was unable to figure out how to extract and purify the penicillin. The penicillin was very unstable and freeze drying was the method used to obtain larger quantities. The first usage by the Oxford team showed very promising results, but the subject died 3 days after they ran out of their limited supplies.

http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/penicillin/penicillin.html

Be sure to flip through all the pages on this latter site if this subject interests you.

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cjwirth on May 11, 2008 - 12:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Sorry, I just moved to the state of Veracruz, Mexico, and my books are still in boxes. In exactly month, June 11th, try searching: surviving peak oil and peak oil preparations. This is the name of a blog I am working on and it will have the penicillin info and many good books listed. If that doesn't work, email me then: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com

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208 comments on Rising Energy Costs and the Future of Hospital Work

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