Difficile

Today

I read an  interesting article the other day about attempts to develop antibody treatments against superbugs, mainly clostridium difficile that threatens so many hospitals. It seems that hospitals, which should be havens of health, harbour more dangers to human life within their walls than any private dwelling.

In My Day

When you're a student, you'll do almost anything to earn some money to tide you over the long vacations. There's a sort of jungle telegraph that tells you about various opportunities. I suppose (because I can't remember how else I knew about this) that this was how I found out about what was probably the most bizarre of the many temporary jobs that I did.

Back in 1967 or thereabouts, one of the large London hospitals (St Thomas's, I think) was plagued with something somewhat larger than a superbug - Pharaoh's ants. These creatures apparently love a bit of nice central heating and their handy habit of continually forming new colonies meant that their spread throughout sprawling Victorian buildings was unstoppable. So, pretty difficile in their own way.

So they called in the pest controllers and I, together with about fifteen students turned up to await instructions. I don't think I knew anything about the ants and probably imagined that they formed marauding hordes that destroyed all in their path. like the African army ants that just leave skeletons behind.

Our job was to lay bait. The bait consisted of tiny parcels of poisoned meat which we taped at (apparently) strategic ant crossroads throughout the hospital. We were given rubber gloves but no kind of protective clothing. And we weren't told what to do if we actually saw any ants. I think that the job lasted several days and by the time we'd finished the hospital floors and corridors all had fetching borders of foil-wrapped meat.

I have no clue whether the treatment stopped the infestation; certainly I wasn't asked back for a second attempt.

Reading up on these creatures I find that they are very hard to eradicate and that just about the only thing that really gets rid of them are bed bugs. Now that is a really interesting choice for hospitals!