Q 01/05

Antibiotics work against bacteria but are useless against which of these?

A) Streptococci

B) Staphylococci

C) Viruses

D) Spirochaetes

Answer · why

C) Viruses

Viruses. That is why antibiotics do nothing for a cold or flu, and prescribing them for such infections anyway is one of the commonest ways the drugs ...

Q 02/05

What does the word 'antibiotic' literally mean, from its Greek roots?

A) 'Against rot'

B) 'Opposing life'

C) 'Small killer'

D) 'Clean blood'

Answer · why

B) 'Opposing life'

'Opposing life'. It joins the Greek anti, against, to bios, life, and it began as an adjective for anything that destroyed microbes; only in the 1940s...

Q 03/05

Who discovered penicillin after noticing mould on a culture plate at a London hospital?

A) Alexander Fleming

B) Joseph Lister

C) Louis Pasteur

D) Robert Koch

Answer · why

A) Alexander Fleming

Alexander Fleming. His assistants could never purify the unstable 'mould juice', so his 1929 paper made only a passing mention of using it as a medici...

Q 04/05

At which London hospital was penicillin discovered?

A) St Mary's, Paddington

B) The Royal Free

C) St Bartholomew's

D) Guy's, Southwark

Answer · why

A) St Mary's, Paddington

St Mary's, Paddington. The cramped laboratory survives as a museum, but the hospital never turned the find into a medicine; that took a team at Oxford...

Q 05/05

Which bacterium was growing on the famous contaminated culture plate that led to penicillin?

A) Bacillus anthracis

B) Escherichia coli

C) Staphylococcus aureus

D) Streptococcus pyogenes

Answer · why

C) Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus. Around the stray mould the colonies had vanished, leaving a clear ring, which showed that the mould was giving off something th...