Neruda y la resistencia a los antibióticos

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance has been a problem in medicine, since their incorporation to clinical practice. Numerous papers have been written on the subject. The analysis of two poems by Pablo Neruda "How much does a man live" and "Larynx", included in the volume "Estravagario" and published for the fi rst time in 1957 and 1958, give us an incredible revelation about the concept of resistance. In these poems aureomycin, the fi rst antimicrobial of the family of tetracyclines, was included as a poetic fi gure and the therapeutic action of antimicrobials was described. "Never so much bugs died / tons of them fell / but the few that remained alive / manifested their perversity". These writings incorporated novel concepts, even for physicians of that time and described the closeness of death that a patient may perceive during the course of a given disease. The capacity of Pablo Neruda to extract the essence of situations and to anticipate to conditions that only years later became clinically relevant problems, is noteworthy.