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How Drinking Broth Of Bacteria Made Me Famous

Story about a famous, brave scientist research on stomach bacteria

By Marcel FernandezPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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How Drinking Broth Of Bacteria Made Me Famous
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Living in the dark ages of medicine would be the worst thing. As a scientist myself, there are so many horrid stories about how people conducted experiments or did diagnostic of patients—there this one story I want to tell you about and how I came to know about it. I went to the University of Western Australia. My University had a professor receive the Nobel Prize Award in Medicine and Physiology. I thought it was cool to go to the same University as this professor who won the Nobel Prize as that is my lifelong dream. In the library, I studied it is named BJ library (I know what all of you are thinking), but I was studying and ready leave. I saw this man talking to a group of people, and then they left him after a while, and I thought that it was strange. So I wondered who this man is, right? I go up to him and get a better look at him; this well-aged man with grey hair still has some colour in and cool blue eyes. I knew that there was something special about him but cannot put my finger on it.

By 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

“Who were those people,” I asked sheepishly.

“I was doing a tour guide,” He spoke softly.

“Tour of this library?” I spoke up.

“Yes, and the history behind it” He smiled.

“Ahhh, I understand. If you don’t mind can you tell me I would like to know?” I asked.

“He said sure,” Softly said.

The story goes BJ was a scientist working at the Royal Perth Hospital. BJ research focused on looking at gastritis and how bacteria cause peptic ulcers and gastric cancers. As he was thinking about what type of experiments he needs to do and who to ask, a pathologist named Robin Warren asked if he could help. Robin had an interest in gastritis and knew a thing or two looking at the stomach. A collaboration was thus born between the two researchers. They found the presence of bacteria spiral kind in the stomach of those who had peptic ulcers. The findings were ridiculed by his peers and doctors alike. His peers and doctors thought bacteria can’t survive or live in the stomach's acidic environment. But BJ and Robin knew that they were right and tried to push on. Somehow, they manage to get funding for a year to look at clinical samples of patients with peptic ulcers; however, 30 out of 100 showed no signs to support the theory. Heartbroken, they did not give up but went back and looked at what might be going on and found that the lab technicians were throwing samples out after two days. This is common practice for growing bacteria from the throat swabs, but stomach samples are different. Having found the problem, they allowed the bacteria to grow for a couple of days more and found a presence of H.pylori. They thought this is big news, and it was, but the scientist and doctors still criticized the findings. They thought they were on the right track and needed to see if H.pylori can grow in a model host organism like lab rats; however, no matter how hard they tried, they could not get the bacteria to grow. BJ then decided to drink this broth with the bacteria to prove to the rest of his peers that this H.pylori can cause peptic ulcers. He thought he has to wait months for the ulcers to form; however, he was getting sick three days later with bad breath, vomiting, and stomach pain. A biopsy was done on his stomach, which showed H.pylori was growing. The findings were published, and years later, that finding was why Robin and BJ were named Nobel Prize winners. The man put his coffee down with a smile on his face.

By Adrian Lange on Unsplash

How do you know any of this? I asked curiously.

“Well, it is simple. I am Barry James Marshal, and this library is named after me BJ” Smiled Barry James Marshal.

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About the Creator

Marcel Fernandez

Hi all my name is Marcel and I like to write about meditation, how to make money online, how to be healthy and other fun stuff. I hope you learn new things from what I write about as it means a lot to me.

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