The article was originally published by Mostly Science: What is antibiotic resistance and Why does it matter? // June 5, 2014
The original article and lots of other well-written, interesting and accessible science-related articles can be found here.

Editor and publishing credit to the Mostly Science power duo Christopher Haggarty-Weir and Wes Wilson.

Our world was a very different place before 1928, when Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the very first antibiotic – penicillin. Weaponless, we as humans were much more vulnerable to the microscopic pathogens around us.

In order to appreciate how far we’ve come, consider that a single bacterial species Streptococcus pyogenes alone used to cause half of all post-birth deaths. Infected cuts in the skin, or mild throat infections would become very serious very quickly without medicine, and were enough to defeat the human body. Today, there is an estimated 700 million new infections worldwide each year…