[Comment] How long must we treat? A question as old as penicillin

Abstract

When penicillin first entered hospital wards in the 1940s, its use was essentially treatment through experimentation. Early publications were case series by clinicians learning by doing, describing their experience in detail for the knowledge of other physicians and the benefit of their patients. They treated even severe pneumococcal pneumonia for only a few days and with much lower doses than we use today.1–3 Although these regimens were dictated as much by scarcity as by principle, they were successful.