In 1910, the first among these, an arsenic derivative known as arsphenamine, was discovered by Drs. Paul Ehrlich and Sahachiro Hata, who found it could kill syphilis-causing microbes. Soon there was a seemingly limitless bounty of antibiotics, among them penicillin, an antibacterial chemical secreted by a fungus that was discovered in molding plates by Alexander Fleming in 1928, and the anti-TB drug streptomycin, isolated from bacteria in clods of dirt by Albert Schatz and Selman Waksman in 1943.
