16

CHAPTER

231

Antimicrobial Drugs

Probably the first thing you ask for when you’re sick is a pill to make you feel
better. Typically you don’t care how the pill works as long as it does work.
Physicians have an arsenal of substances that combat disease. These substances
are chemical agents called drugsand taking drugs to cure a disease is called
chemotherapy. Throughout this book you learned about pathogenic microorgan-
ismsthat are harmful when they invade a body. However, there are some microor-
ganisms that actually prevent the harmful effect of pathogenic microorganisms.
A microorganism that destroys a pathogenic microorganism and used to cure
a disease is referred to as an antimicrobial drug. You’ll learn about antimicro-
bial drugs in this chapter.

Chemotherapeutic Agents: The Silver Bullet

When we hear the term chemotherapy, we tend to think of an ongoing treatment
for cancer. While this is true, chemotherapy is any treatment that introduces a
chemical substance into the body to destroy a pathogenic microorganism. The
chemical substance is a chemotherapeutic agent.

Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click here for terms of use.