Publisher's Synopsis
"A remarkable story of the scientists behind a long-forgotten and life-saving cure: the healing viruses that can conquer antibiotic resistant bacterial infections First discovered in 1917, bacteriophages-or "phages"-are living medicines: viruses that devour bacteria. Ubiquitous in the environment, they are found in water, soil, inside plants and animals, and in the human body. When phages were first recognized as medicines, their promise seemed limitless. Grown by research scientists and physicians in France, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere to target specific bacteria, they cured cholera, dysentery, bubonic plague, and other deadly infectious diseases. But after Stalin's brutal purges and the rise of antibiotics, phage therapy declined and nearly was lost to history-until today. In The Living Medicine, acclaimed science journalist Lina Zeldovich reveals the remarkable history of phages, told through the lives of the French, Soviet, and
