The land holds more than food; it contains medical breakthroughs and new medicines

"The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all." --- Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America, 1977

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The land Berry is talking about does more than bind us together, it contains gifts that stretch beyond food. Seventy-five years ago, in Sanborn Field soil plot #23 in Columbia, Missouri, the soil yielded an incredible medical breakthrough, reports Tyne Morgan of The Scoop. Before this discovery, physicians used penicillin alongside other antibiotics with mixed results. In the 1940s, scientists pushed to find more effective and non-toxic microorganisms for people or animals.

Dr. Tim Reinbott, the director of Sanborn Field at the University of Missouri, told Morgan: "Seventy-five years ago, we had known about penicillin and other types of antibiotics, but they were only about 40% effective. . . . [Scientists]were looking for that golden antibiotic, that one that would really be very effective and be taken orally, not by injection. . . . Benjamin Duggar was working for Lederle Laboratories at the time, and he knew the director of Sanborn Field, who was William J. Albrecht, who was the soil microbiologist. Duggar asked him for some soil samples from Sanborn Field so that he could begin to culture for these microorganisms."

Duggar's soil samples "contained a golden mold that suppressed the growth of many microorganisms, including streptococci, a bacteria that causes various types of infections," Morgan writes. "From the sample, researchers eventually created aureomycin, which proved to be an antibiotic effective against 90% of bacteria-caused infections in humans." Bob Kremer, adjunct professor of soil microbiology at the University of Missouri, told Morgan, "One of the interesting facts that is often overlooked is that in any soil, you will find antibiotics, because it's just the nature of how these bacteria survive in nature."

The Food and Drug Administration approved aureomycin for human illness in 1948, and "Reinbott says for the first 30 to 40 years after the discovery of aureomycin, it was the go-to antibiotic for human medicine, but it also grew in popularity within animal medicine," Morgan reports. 

"To celebrate the discovery of aureomycin, a soil sample from Plot 23 was sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where it still resides today," Morgan writes. "The discovery at Sanborn Field wasn't just a breakthrough for human medical science, it was also a breakthrough for livestock. . . . aureomycin is still widely used in cattle today. Such an antibiotic discovery is estimated to cost $1.5 billion in 2023."

Standing at Sanborn Field, Reinbott told Morgan: "We've more aureomycin discoveries out here -- we've just got to look for them. It may or may not be an antibiotic, but it can be something just as groundbreaking, and that's what gets me excited."