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Penicillin is not just the name of a single antibiotic—it is also a blanket term for the family of drugs containing chemical relatives of penicillin such as amoxicillin or methicillin.

Bacteria resistant to methicillin emerged in hedgehogs long before the drug was prescribed to treat infections.

Close to half of these staph bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics that include methicillin, making them more difficult to fight.

They can spread drug resistance, making a bug like Staphylococcus aureus, which was eminently curable about seventy years ago, almost invulnerable to common antibiotics such as methicillin.

Staph infections have become increasingly resistant to drugs used to treat them, specifically methicillin.