I was reading about "Moldy Mary", a woman named Mary Hunt who had a job finding rotting fruit in groceries to test for new antibiotics. In 1943 she found a melon with a mold that produced a variety of penicillin that allowed it to be easily mass-produced. I wondered to myself if anyone is doing this kind of research today?
I was also reading about Coley's toxins. Around 1900 he came up with a method of using heat-killed bacteria to induce an immune response in cancer patients, many of which had complete remission. For real!
His approach fell out of favor for reasons I find disingenuous. Read this link to see the story: https://www.cancerresearch.org/blog/april-2015/what-ever-happened-to-coleys-toxins
It makes me wonder what other treatments are out there in the ordinary world, that we are overlooking.
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