The remarkable and spectacular breakthroughs accomplished by Pasteur, Koch, Jenner, and a host of others more or less paved the way towards several miraculous discoveries in curing fatal and dreadful human ailments thereby minimizing their immense sufferings. Between 1935 and 1944 the field of microbiology, and by implication medicine as a whole, underwent dramatic advancement. The discovery of the extraordinary antibacterial properties of sulphonamides, penicillin, and streptomycin triggered a frantic hunt for more antimicrobial drugs that was to yield an abundant harvest in a very short space of time. Many meaningful and wonderful researches also led to the discovery of a good number of causative agents of diseases and altogether newer techniques for diagnosis, which ultimately rendered the diagnosis of these ailments rather rapid and precise. By the early 1960s more than 50 antibacterial agents were available to the prescribing physician and, largely by a process of chemical modification of existing compounds, that number has more than tripled today. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy is a major forum exclusively devoted to antimicrobial, antiviral, antiparasitic, and anticancer agents and chemotherapy. It is also a key source for microbiologists, pharmaceutical researchers, biochemists, pharmacologists, clinicians, and other specialists in infectious diseases. Progress in the development of novel antibacterial agents has been great, but the development of effective, nontoxic antifungal and antiviral agents has been slow. Proper selection of new antibiotics will be a major force in slowing the development of antimicrobial resistance. Proper hygiene practices will reduce plasmid transfer and the establishment of multiple drug-resistant bacteria in the hospital and will delay the appearance of such species in the community. We have now become so used to the ready availability of these relatively safe and highly effective 'miracle drugs' that it is now hard to grasp how they transformed the treatment of infection.
