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20260920 100000 UTC
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[00:00:00] a microorganism that causes diseases in
[00:00:03] 1883 was discovered by the German
[00:00:07] scientist Robert Koch, he named
[00:00:10] it comma cholera
[00:00:13] because of its curved shape.
[00:00:17] Mainly, people suffer from cholera. The infection
[00:00:20] affects everyone without exception, but depending
[00:00:23] on immunity, the disease proceeds
[00:00:26] differently. To prevent the spread
[00:00:30] of infection, it is extremely important to identify it in time, isolate
[00:00:34] the sick person and start their
[00:00:37] treatment.
[00:00:40] To combat cholera, in July 1942,
[00:00:43] microbiologist Zinaida Yermolyeva flew from Moscow. There was no
[00:00:47] time to pack, so the professor took only the most
[00:00:50] necessary diagnostic drugs and serums. To
[00:00:53] Stalingrad, Yermolyeva went by military transport
[00:00:57] aircraft. The front line then passed nearby.
[00:01:00] cities, in order not to allow the expansion
[00:01:03] of the epidemic, it was necessary to act very quickly,
[00:01:06] so immediately upon arrival at 2:00 at night, an emergency
[00:01:10] commission was convened headed by the Deputy
[00:01:14] People's Commissar of Health of the USSR. It was
[00:01:17] decided to chlorinate water in all available
[00:01:21] sources, and Zinaida Yermolyeva
[00:01:24] insisted that everyone without exception in Stalingrad, and
[00:01:28] that's more than... people
[00:01:31] should be given cholera bacteriophage, it
[00:01:34] kills the bacteria
[00:01:36] pathogens.
[00:01:43] Under normal circumstances, cholera is treated symptomatically,
[00:01:47] because the main symptom is dehydration, so
[00:01:50] patients are shown copious intravenous infusion
[00:01:53] of hypertonic saline heated to 40°
[00:01:57] with a volume of up to 2 liters. The procedure is performed two or three times a
[00:02:00] day. In special cases, such as the risk of an epidemic,
[00:02:04] infected people are given cholera bacteriophage to drink. This
[00:02:07] is a virus that finds a harmful bacterium, like a syringe,
[00:02:11] injects its DNA into it, neutralizes it, and
[00:02:14] then turns it into a factory for producing hundreds of new
[00:02:18] viruses that destroy the pathogens
[00:02:20] of cholera.
[00:02:24] As soon as it became clear that the doses
[00:02:27] brought from Moscow were not enough,
[00:02:30] Yermolyeva sent a request to the People's Commissariat
[00:02:33] of Health for them to send more. The same day, a
[00:02:36] train with all available supplies
[00:02:39] of bacteriophage departed from Moscow.
[00:02:42] But, while waiting for the vital
[00:02:46] drug, the work did not stop.
[00:02:49] To detect the disease at an early stage,
[00:02:52] Yermolyeva set up express diagnostics
[00:02:56] for cholera in hospitals
[00:02:58] and medical units. With her assistance, 2,000 beds
[00:03:02] were organized for the infected and another
[00:03:05] thousand for those who had contact with
[00:03:08] the sick, all of whom were given clean
[00:03:12] linen and clothing. The matter remained for
[00:03:15] the bacteriophage, whose arrival was expected any day
[00:03:19] now. Total disinfection was organized in the city,
[00:03:23] wells were chlorinated, latrines, apartments,
[00:03:26] hospitals, shops and administration were disinfected.
[00:04:00] less than a minute, wash hands necessarily with soap
[00:04:03] or lye, scald dishes
[00:04:06] with boiling water, do not drink water from wells and
[00:04:09] rivers. These rules were duplicated on radio and
[00:04:12] in newspapers. Ermolyeva recalled a funny incident when
[00:04:16] one day, when she went down to the Volga to take water samples,
[00:04:19] a boy came up to her and said:
[00:04:23] "Auntie, don't you see, it says, no swimming,
[00:04:27] no drinking raw water."
[00:04:30] ran away.
[00:04:34] Everything was ready for the treatment of the sick, only the drugs
[00:04:38] from the capital were awaited, but a terrible news arrived: The train with
[00:04:41] bacteriophage that was going from Moscow to Stalingrad was bombed
[00:04:44] by the Germans. Thousands of people, whose days without medicine were
[00:04:47] numbered, lost hope. What
[00:04:50] to do? There was no one else to rely on. Someone
[00:04:54] suggested producing cholera bacteriophage right there,
[00:04:57] but how to do it in a besieged city? And in huge
[00:05:01] quantities, because every day the drug had to be given
[00:05:04] both to those remaining in the city and to thousands of people leaving,
[00:05:08] going, flying from
[00:05:10] Stalingrad.
[00:05:20] By that time, Yermolyeva had been studying cholera
[00:05:24] and ways to combat it for many years,
[00:05:28] and although a vaccine for this terrible disease
[00:05:32] was developed back in 1892 by the Russian scientist
[00:05:35] Vladimir Khavkin, it was not suitable for Stalingrad.
[00:05:39] I'll explain why. A vaccine
[00:05:43] is a weakened or killed
[00:05:46] pathogen, to which the body's cells react
[00:05:49] as to a foreign body, and to develop
[00:05:53] immunity, the vaccine must be administered two or three times
[00:05:56] over several weeks. In Stalingrad, there was no
[00:06:00] time for this. The disease had already engulfed the front-line areas and
[00:06:04] was actively spreading through the city. It had to be
[00:06:07] stopped immediately. It was
[00:06:10] precisely for such cases that Yermolyeva developed her
[00:06:14] specific bacteriophage.
[00:06:17] She had been studying cholera since she was a student
[00:06:21] at the medical institute. Zinaida Yermolyeva's attention
[00:06:24] was drawn to so-called cholera-like
[00:06:26] vibrios. It was believed that they were not as dangerous as the established
[00:06:30] cholera pathogen, and caused only mild indigestion.
[00:06:33] Twenty-four-year-old Yermolyeva
[00:06:36] decided to test this on herself. She took 1.5
[00:06:40] billion microbial bodies of cholera-like embryos
[00:06:43] to study the course of the disease. After only
[00:06:46] a few hours, she developed all the classic
[00:06:49] symptoms of cholera. Her body was then able to overcome
[00:06:53] the disease, and Yermolyeva developed a means of combating several
[00:06:56] pathogens of the deadly disease at once. Her drug
[00:07:00] included a set of active bacteriophages against different
[00:07:03] cholera vibrios. This knowledge helped Yermolyeva in
[00:07:07] Stalingrad.
[00:12:09] is still not defeated, and in a number of countries,
[00:12:13] tens of thousands of cases
[00:12:16] are recorded annually. About how the means
[00:12:20] of combating this disease have changed in 80 years, we
[00:12:23] will talk with... Professor, microbiologist,
[00:12:27] researcher of the scientific heritage of Zinaida
[00:12:30] Yermolyeva, Larisa Petrovna Blinkova.
[00:12:33] Hello, Larisa Petrovna,
[00:12:37] how widespread is cholera
[00:12:40] today around the world? Now
[00:12:42] WHO, uh-huh, registers cases of cholera
[00:12:46] mostly in Africa, in the Middle East, there are cases in
[00:12:50] Asia, in India, as of January 2026.
[00:12:53] WHO reported cholera incidence
[00:12:57] worldwide at
[00:13:00] 17. Now the main
[00:13:04] tools to combat cholera -
[00:13:06] what do we have? For example, in Russia,
[00:13:09] we have a permitted vaccine. Somewhere
[00:13:13] after 10 days, a certain
[00:13:16] level of immunity is already achieved, but as you understand, this
[00:13:20] requires a certain period of time, and measures need to be taken
[00:13:23] right now, when sometimes a person's life when ill can be counted
[00:13:27] in hours, so of course,
[00:13:31] electrolyte exposure and fluid
[00:13:35] administration are used, in addition to this,
[00:13:37] antibiotics are used, during the Great
[00:13:41] Patriotic War, 1942, antibiotics had
[00:13:45] not yet been invented,
[00:13:48] how did Yermolyeva manage to
[00:13:51] obtain this medicine? A more or less suitable
[00:13:55] basement was found in
[00:13:57] one house, in this
[00:14:00] basement she set up
[00:14:03] a laboratory, together with her
[00:14:06] assistants, they
[00:14:09] began to make cholera bacteriophages
[00:14:13] using prepared
[00:14:17] beef broth, it was boiled,
[00:14:20] after that they infected it
[00:14:23] with a strain of cholera vibrio, uh-huh.
[00:14:26] then they introduced bacteriophage, the bacteria
[00:14:29] eater, in this way,
[00:14:33] under bombing, in that basement, Zinaida
[00:14:36] Vissarionovna, together with her assistants,
[00:14:40] produced 5,000 doses
[00:14:43] of bacteriophage daily. Now it was necessary to ensure that
[00:14:47] everyone in the city took the medicine. Daily,
[00:14:51] up to 50 thousand people received bacteriophage,
[00:14:54] which had never happened in world practice. Each dose
[00:14:58] was recorded in special journals, which allowed tracking population
[00:15:02] coverage. Everyone who took the medicine received a certificate,
[00:15:05] without this paper, it was impossible even to get bread, which at that
[00:15:09] time was distributed by ration cards, not to mention
[00:15:12] leaving the city.
[00:15:15] As far as I know, viruses adapt to some
[00:15:19] drugs the fastest, but
[00:15:21] bacteria also have this ability, so, uh-huh.
[00:15:25] And I suppose this problem was in Stalingrad, how was
[00:15:29] it solved? Well, for the bacteriophage to be able to
[00:15:32] act on the cholera strains that
[00:15:36] were circulating in that...
[00:16:52] By the end of August 1942, all
[00:16:55] measures to combat cholera, in conjunction, worked.
[00:16:58] The outbreak of the disease in Stalingrad was successfully
[00:17:01] stopped. For her contribution to the fight against the epidemic, she was
[00:17:05] awarded the Order of Lenin. She was presented with it.
[00:17:38] At that time, there were no effective drugs for this kind
[00:17:41] of infection, and bandages and
[00:17:45] antiseptics did not help. The cause
[00:17:48] of infection was harmful microbes, and
[00:17:51] to neutralize them, Yermolyeva began studying
[00:17:55] the properties of mold even
[00:17:58] before the war, and similar work was also conducted abroad.
[00:18:01] The ability of mold to inhibit
[00:18:04] the growth of certain bacteria was first noted
[00:18:07] in 1871 by Professor
[00:18:11] Vyacheslav Manasein of the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy. But it was not
[00:18:14] until almost 60 years later,
[00:18:17] in 1928, that the English microbiologist
[00:18:21] Alexander Fleming discovered which particular mold
[00:18:25] fungus could destroy microbes. It was
[00:18:28] Penicillium. But he could not isolate it in its pure form
[00:18:31] to use as a medicine. This was only achieved in
[00:18:35] 1941 by scientists Howard Florey and
[00:18:39] Ernst Chain. The appearance of the world's first antibiotic
[00:18:43] was a revolution in medicine. Several injections
[00:18:46] of the new drug literally brought back to life patients
[00:18:49] dying from blood poisoning.
[00:18:50] Doctors from the
[00:18:55] USSR's allied countries already
[00:18:59] had a medicine that could save
[00:19:03] thousands of lives of Soviet
[00:19:05] soldiers. It seemed
[00:19:07] like a small thing to get the drug or the technology for its
[00:19:10] production, but the British were not in a hurry
[00:19:14] to share the secret. The Soviet Union offered
[00:19:17] huge sums of money, but they either overcharged
[00:19:20] or stalled for time. And
[00:19:24] time, ironically, was what they didn't
[00:19:26] have.
[00:19:28] After returning to Moscow, Zinaida Yermolyeva received an assignment
[00:19:32] from the State Defense Committee to create a domestic
[00:19:36] penicillin in the shortest possible time.
[00:19:38] Her laboratory worked in three shifts, the most difficult
[00:19:42] thing was to find the right type of mold, because there are so many
[00:19:45] of them, and only a few are capable of synthesizing
[00:19:48] an antibiotic. Yermolyeva's assistant, Tamara Bolezina,
[00:19:52] later recalled that they collected mold everywhere, in
[00:19:56] the grass, on the ground, trees, basement walls, over
[00:19:59] 90 samples, but they could not find the right microorganism. managed,
[00:20:03] but one day... the lab assistant
[00:20:07] was lucky. The ninety-third sample, which
[00:20:11] she took from the walls of a bomb shelter, turned
[00:20:14] out to be capable of suppressing
[00:20:18] the growth of streptococci and staphylococci, which
[00:20:21] cause blood poisoning.
[00:20:25] Rodents without treatment died within
[00:20:28] 48 hours, and those who were given
[00:20:31] the medicine recovered. Later,
[00:20:34] the drug was tested on other
[00:20:37] animals that were injected with other types
[00:20:40] of deadly infections, the result was again
[00:20:44] positive. The drug was named
[00:20:47] Crustosin from the Latin name.
[00:21:20] When Florey learned of the discovery by Soviet scientists, he decided
[00:21:24] to compare it with his own. To Florey's surprise, in laboratory
[00:21:28] conditions, Soviet penicillin proved to be more active. Then
[00:21:31] it was decided to conduct clinical trials. 12 soldiers
[00:21:35] with blood poisoning were divided into two equal groups: one
[00:21:39] was given Soviet crustacin, the other - Florey's penicillin.
[00:21:42] Moreover, the dose of the Soviet drug was 10 times
[00:21:46] lower. On the tenth day, both groups of wounded began to recover.
[00:22:20] even helped those who were previously considered doomed.
[00:22:24] The drug was administered for the prevention
[00:22:27] of sepsis in severely wounded patients. Such
[00:22:30] patients had the letter P put in their chart, so that
[00:22:33] throughout their journey to the rear, they would continue
[00:22:37] to be given medication, and already in the hospital, an assessment
[00:22:41] of its
[00:22:42] action was given.
[00:22:45] The method proved to be effective. In such cases,
[00:22:48] blood poisoning did not develop. Thanks to the drug, mortality from
[00:22:52] wound infection in the army decreased by 80%, and
[00:22:56] the number of limb amputations by a third.
[00:22:59] Small laboratories for the production of Crustazine were organized right in
[00:23:02] field hospitals. In Moscow and Riga, the first factories
[00:23:06] for Soviet penicillin appeared. Later, they were opened in other
[00:23:10] cities.
[00:23:13] Today, when medicine continues to fight resistant
[00:23:16] infections and new viruses, Zinaida's actions. to develop
[00:23:28] a real weapon against cholera, stop
[00:23:31] the epidemic, and then, based on the experience gained, she
[00:23:35] created the first Soviet penicillin,
[00:23:39] which helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands
[00:23:43] of wounded soldiers. Well, it's time to summarize.
[00:23:46] So, is it true
[00:23:48] that the vaccine existing at that time did not
[00:23:52] work against cholera in Stalingrad? Not
[00:23:55] a fact. The vaccine is needed for
[00:23:58] prevention, and during a developing epidemic,
[00:24:02] people need to be treated, and very quickly. This is what
[00:24:05] the medics under the leadership of Zinaida
[00:24:09] Yermolyeva were doing. Did the Germans really manage
[00:24:12] to destroy all supplies of the drug for the deadly
[00:24:16] disease that was brought into the city on the Volga? That is a fact.
[00:24:20] Zinaida Yermolyeva for the treatment of infected
[00:24:24] requested additional doses of bacteriophage from Moscow,
[00:24:26] but the Germans bombed
[00:24:30] the train with the medicine. Well, and did Yermolyeva
[00:24:34] really manage to develop a new
[00:24:38] revolutionary medicine
[00:24:40] right in the basement? This is a fact, but with
[00:24:44] a small caveat. The fact is that the very
[00:24:47] fungus for the drug was found in the basement,
[00:24:50] and the medicine itself, the first
[00:24:53] Soviet antibiotic, Yermolyeva developed already in her
[00:24:57] Moscow laboratory. That's all for now, you were with Ororat
[00:25:01] Keshchan and the program Nefakt. See you on Zvezda.