Basically if you get an injury like a scratch, you rub an antiseptic solution on it to reduce the chance of a bacterial infection, but if someone had a full blown bacterial infection, antiseptic solution wouldn’t do anything. Why is that?
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When bacteria are outside your body, or on your skin, you can kill them with pretty aggressive substances. These substances would kill you too if you drank them, but they’re safe to clean e.g. your countertop with, and some of them can also be applied to your skin or an open wound – they might sting but they don’t cause any real harm to you.
When bacteria are inside your body, you can’t use these substances, because they’d kill you (or at least make you very sick) if you tried to get them inside your body. The problem being that they don’t specifically kill bacteria – they’re harmful to all life. To kill bacteria inside your body, you need something more specific – something that only harms bacteria and (mostly) leaves your body alone. Something called an “antibiotic”.
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