Sulfa antibiotics in 1909

An Austrian PhD student apparently created a sulfa antibiotic in 1909 as part of his thesis on chemical synthesis without realizing its medical potential. What is the impact if that potential is realized before World War I breaks out?
 
Short answer - a lot of lives are saved. Of course with the discovery one one sulfa drug there will be a stampede to find other sulfa drugs. The spectrum of effectiveness is limited, and one problem is inexperienced surgeons will try to have antibiotics substitute for proper surgical care, especially serial debridement and avoiding premature wound closure. Unfortunately that lesson tends to be relearned every war, however even so sulfa drugs will be a big plus. The bacteria that cause gas gangrene are NOT sensitive to sulfa drugs, so in WWI treatment will still be proper surgical/wound care.

One possible butterfly is that once antibiotics are discovered, in addition to other sulfa drugs there may be searches for other types and things like penicilillin MIGHT be discovered earlier.
 
One side effect: I might have known my maternal grandfather. He died of an infectious disease (don't recall what) in 1936 just before sulfa drugs became available.
 
instead of 3 billion people in 1960 like the world had OTL,

maybe the world had 5 billion in 1960 and perhaps close to 9 or 10 billion today.

And I used to be a low-population person like most people, probably like you are, believing that certainly we want the parents to have the financial resources to afford education and health care for their children. Until philosopher Derek Parfit convinced me there's a better case for high population.
 
Mmm. This would mean that the reasons / need for importing foreign (Marocan/Turkish) "guest"-workers in the 1960's are not there because the are more european workers availble.
 
instead of 3 billion people in 1960 like the world had OTL,

maybe the world had 5 billion in 1960 and perhaps close to 9 or 10 billion today.

And I used to be a low-population person like most people, probably like you are, believing that certainly we want the parents to have the financial resources to afford education and health care for their children. Until philosopher Derek Parfit convinced me there's a better case for high population.
The problema i always have with the idea that we want parents to have the financial resources to afford education and health care for their children, are two.

1.- the really unequal wealth distribution of the world, basically if we have a more equal wealth distribution, noting stop a couple to have as much as 5 to 10 kids without financial stress.
2.- The case of the Japanese millionaire man that have 13 children with surrogate mothers will become a lot more common.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/20/japanese-man-custody-13-surrogate-children-thai-court

AS the OP. Question
Well is obviously a great plus to the modern medicine, but a lot of people will try to use the sulfa drugs as the Cure all, and the sulfa drugs tend to have really nasty secondary effect, especially the allergic reactions, that could put a pause to their mass adoption
 
This works if you need a POD to get a Soylent Green ATL or any of various 60s to late 70s population/environmental doomsayer's predictions of collapse or at least severe problems around now.
 
The effect of sulfa antibiotics on the world population roughly 20 years earlier will not be as great as some people think. While antibiotics in general are a very good thing indeed, the major increases in lifespan and particularly in maternal health/mortality and infant mortality and mortality in children up to five is NOT due to antibiotics. Clean water and sewage disposal, proper nutrition, vaccines (which won't arrive much sooner if at all with sulfa drugs earlier), birth control, etc all contribute more to a population bump than antibiotics. Improved crops and farming techniques for nutrition. Having said all that you will see an increase in population compared to OTL but I'm not so sure that will mean a huge wave downstream - when conditions improve, folks tend to have fewer children as you don't need so many spares. Antibiotics, or at least sulfa drugs 20 years early, are not enough to lead to "soylent green" by the 60s/70s or even now.
 
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