Since the advent of penicillin in the late nineteenth century, antibiotics have been slowly killing mankind.

Granted they have miraculously cured a great many along the way but as a people, the rip shit ‘n bust technique employed by antibiotics has left many of us with enfeebled or sometimes, irreparably damaged constitutions.

A problem arose when some people began perceiving antibiotics as a cure for all illness; although when it comes to infection they are a certain miracle-drug, against anything other than infection all antibiotics do is harm the user.

Despite this truth there were still people who, at the onset of the cold or flu virus, would load up with antibiotics in the hope this would mitigate their symptoms. While it would in most cases prevent the inherent mucus from becoming infected, leading to respiratory or ear infection, this flagrant overuse of antibiotics has lead to a world where many illnesses and diseases have developed resistance hence are now impervious to its effects. Further to that, attempts to locate variants of the drug are becoming increasingly futile.

As well as scientists having difficulty in finding effective antibiotic replacements meaning there might one day be no easy way to fight infection, then there is the issue of what antibiotics are doing to our insides. Given their desire to kill everything in the body showing signs of decay, antibiotics are responsible for wiping out a users entire supply of digestive bacteria, rendering digestion from there on in something of a non-event…

Antibiotics’ counterpart, pro-biotics was developed to aid in the regeneration of the digestive bacteria thoughtlessly massacred by antibiotics. These come in capsule form and must be kept cool until usage.

…Seemingly we are not prepared to curb this reckless use of antibiotics until we have succeeded in fashioning a race of – on account of the inability to digest basic minerals – malnourished weaklings susceptible to every kind of infection that life can throw at us.

I am unsure exactly what kind of forethought Mr Pasteur put into his declaration that penicillin was going to cure the ills of the nineteenth century but it appears that now, from the twenty-first century, modern man need to do some forward thinking ourselves.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Callum Awl

Photography by Di Ore Ayjah