I just happened upon this. Sulfa drugs were the first antibiotics, back in the 30s before penicillin.
I'm allergic to this shit. I had to go to the ER for a cat bite once and they said - good thing you remembered you were allergic because otherwise we were going to give you some and the reaction can be quite nasty.
You and 3 to 8% of people, apparently. Like 10 times more common than peanuts allergy.
"Jesus pal, you sick or somethin? Smells like fockin sulfa ovah here"
Have you ever heard of phage therapy? The idea is that you cultivate bacteria that are hostile to whatever bacterial infection you're trying to destroy then inject them in to the patient and let them fight. I guess it was being looked at prior to sulfa and penicillin, but then interest fell off in the West. But in the USSR they kept working on it. It's been a long time since i saw the documentary, but I guess the idea was that if your pathogen can evolve, so can your phage.
Ahh a fellow "I think we can get the same coverage if we give you these 3 different antibiotics at once" traveller.
