Why Is Taking All Doses of Prescribed Antibiotics Important for Worldwide Health?
What could 4000-year-old mummies possibly have to do with Christmas Seals? As strange as it seems, tuberculosis (TB), is the connection. Some Egyptian mummies dating from about 2400 B.C. display symptoms of tuberculosis infection, a deadly disease that has plagued humans since that time. In the early 1900s, Christmas Seals were invented as a way to raise money for treating children who suffered from tuberculosis. Although tuberculosis has not been a major cause of death in the United States in the past 45 years, it remains a serious illness in the developing world. Perhaps of more concern, the World Health Organization warns that drug-resistant strains of TB present a serious, worldwide threat to human health. Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacterium first identified in 1882 by the great German microbiologist, Robert Koch. (Koch was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in medicine for this work.) The evidence of tuberculosis infection in Egyptian mummies indicates that
