A common antibiotic medicine that kills bacteria by preventing them from making proteins, used to treat infections like strep throat and whooping cough.
From Greek erythro- (red) + -mycin (from myces, fungus). Named because the antibiotic was originally extracted from a red-colored bacterium (Streptomyces erythraeus) discovered in soil samples.
Erythromycin was discovered accidentally in 1952 from soil collected in the Philippines, and it became so widely used that some bacteria evolved resistance to it—a perfect example of how successful drugs eventually create new problems.
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