Alexander Fleming Penicillin

Early in the 1920s in London halfway through an experiment with staphylococci bacteria,a young British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming went on vacation. After coming home from two month vacation he noticed some strange mold in unwashed glass dishes where he did his experiments. He also noticed that near mold was a clear ring where no bacteria were growing but further away bacteria were normal. Something killed that bacteria and he thought that this might be important. Fleming worked hard on his mold. He squeezed some juicy mold which he called penicillin. But he couldn't get enough penicillin and couldn't prove that it would kill bacteria and make people healthier. . In the newspapers they wrote what he said: “One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on

The development of penicillin provided a major stepping stone for the practice of medicine, and has saved the lives of countless individuals since its synthesis.

In this reading there was many very interesting facts about penicillin. Penicillin was a breakthrough in the medical field in the 20th century. The scientist Alexander Fleming had accidentally spilled a vile of bacteria on to a plate of bacteria to his benefit he found that is had stopped the growth of bacteria. This accidental discover has benefited everyone in the world because we have to get these shots if we are infected, plus it saved many life’s in world war II. However, Penicillin is considered an antibiotic chemical that is created by living organism to stop the growth of bacteria and prevent an illness if people were to come into contact with this problem. Since the discovery and massive stock piling of this cure it has become less

by Dr. Alexander Fleming. As test continued, Fleming began to realize that he was on the verge of a great discovery. However, he still did not know the identity of the fungus, and had little knowledge of fungi. His crude extracts could be diluted 1,000 times and still be effective in killing bacteria. After years of working on penicillin and going nowhere, many of his co-workers grew tired of hearing about it. The first real test for penicillin came when a 48-year-old police officer nicked himself shaving. After a time, Alexander's face became infected and he developed a temperature. When he was rushed to the hospital, the doctors believed that he had only hours

Fleming began to sort through petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus, bacteria that cause boils, sore throats and abscesses. He noticed something unusual on one dish. It was dotted with colonies, except for one area where a blob of mold was growing. The zone immediately around the mold—later identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatum—was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth (American Chemical Society). The first introduction of penicillin began in the 1940’s, it was recognized as one of the greatest advances in therapeutic medicine. The discovery was made in the United Kingdom but because of World War II, the United States developed a large production of the drug. By 1937, an important pain killer known as methadone was introduced. Morphine, the most active substance in opium, is a very powerful painkiller that hooked many US Civil War soldiers (Drug Free World). They were wanting to find a painkiller that was less addictive to use for surgery and that’s why they invented

World War II was a historical turning point not only for the basis of political power and war tactics, but also for drugs and medical advances. Between 1939 and 1945, new medical techniques were developed as a direct response to new weaponry. One of the more profound advances was penicillin, discovered in 1928 by Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming. During the war, the drug helped reduce the overall number of amputations and

In September of 1928, a rushed bacteriologist Dr. Alexander Fleming let his lab at St. Mary’s Hospital, as usual, a mess on his way to a month vacation. Little did he know he had just spawned one of the most crucial inventions of all time. Upon his return to his laboratory he found mold had grown in the petri dishes he had left out. One of whom contained the rare spore Penicillium notatum that had probably wafted up into his lab through the air currents from the down-stairs mycology lab. Dr. Fleming noticed a ring around the mold, and it was 100% bacteria free! Curiosity urged him onward, as he grew a pure culture of the mold and discover that it killed a great deal of disease-causing bacteria. He would go on to name the substance penicillin.

Jesse Lane says in Not-So-Dumb Luck, When he came back, he noticed that every dish he had left out in the open was covered in mold.” She later says, “The dish that had caught Fleming’s eye contained a staphylococci culture- in other words, it was chock full of bacteria- and while Fleming had been away, the culture had also grown a tuft of yellow-green mold.” And that was the beginning revolutionary history of penicillin. Later in the paragraph the author says, “After some experimentation, he found that the ring was bacteria free, and that the mold was a rare spore called Penicillium notatum,” Where the name penicillin comes from ”which had wafted on air currents into his lab from another floor.” If he hadn’t gone on vacation and left his lab a mess then penicillin wouldn’t be with us today saving lives.Thirdly, penicillin is a widely used medicine that kills bacteria and treats

Fleming’s work was later expanded by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain and their team at Oxford University beginning in 1938, about ten years after Fleming’s first findings. They were able to transform penicillin as a curiosity in the lab and antiseptic to the life-saving antibiotic we know it as today. Howard Florey was deemed at an early age by his older sister who was a medical student at the time to be the next “Pasteur” due to his interest in pursuing medical research. Florey then achieved much as a student at the University of Adelaide, which at that time didn’t specialize in researchers, but in preparing general practitioners. Howard then went on to receive the Rhodes Scholarship to study in England at Oxford University. He used this opportunity as a springboard to going on to study in America and return back to England to Oxford University achieve much greatness. In 1938, he became the director of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. After a few years of taking on a variety of experiments and gathering a team of trusted professionals, he spearheaded work on the self-proclaimed “Penicillin Project” after coming across and sifting

Before 1928, infections such as pneumonia and gonorrhea were untreatable, and many died of blood poisoning due to lesions that are considered minor in modern times. There were no known antibiotics that could kill the bacteria that caused such infections, so people would die of minor illnesses, such as strep throat. However, Alexander Fleming noticed something odd in one of the petri dishes at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, and this seemingly insignificant observation would revolutionize the field of medicine. He was cultivating strains of the Staphylococcus bacteria, and he found that there were not any bacteria colonies growing near a patch of mold in the dish. After looking more into this finding, Alexander Fleming learned that the mold was actually a strain of Penicillium notatum, and it had the capacity to kill malign bacteria like streptococcus, meningococcus

named Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas. During World War One, Alexander Fleming joined the Army Medical Corps and while serving, Fleming had noticed that the substances they were using at the time for antibiotics did more harm to the patients than it helped them. During his time in the military, after discovering how harmful the current antibiotics were, he got to work and made many innovations to them, making them safer and do more good. At the time, these innovations were seen as great things but soon would be overseen with his later discovery.

“In 1938, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain began to study penicillin” (Connors 126). This is important because it means extensive research was being done to figure out a way for penicillin to be applied on humans. “Part of the reason for their increased effort in discovering how penicillin could be used on humans was that a drug was needed to reduce bacterial infections in soldiers’ wounds” (Connors 126). This means there was a need for the development of penicillin, this fact probably motivated the scientists. In the end, without the development of penicillin, it could not have become such a widely used

One researcher he hired soon after his arrival was Ernst Chain(Pbs 2). Ernst Chain became interested in antibacterial chemicals. He started looking back at old articles written by Fleming concerning Penicillin . The Oxford team, as Florey's researchers have become known(Pbs 2), began experimenting with the penicillin mold. Penicillin mold naturally produces the antibiotic Penicillin. Scientists learned to grow Penicillin mold in deep fermentation tanks by adding a kind of sugar and other important ingredients. After enough grew scientists separated the penicillin product from the mold. Finally it was purified and bottled and eventually used as an antibiotic. They took it one step further than Fleming did, they did not just try it on a petri dish, but injected it in live mice. With controlled experimentation, they found it cured mice with bacterial infections. They went on to try it on a few human subjects and saw amazing

Have you ever wondered how does medicine works and how was it discovered? Alexander Fleming was a bacteriologist that went to St Mary’s Medical school. Fleming had many marvelous discoveries such as penicillin. Fleming served many wars as a medic and bacteriologist. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, which is a fungus, to make the first medicine.

Fleming had accidently left the virus out on a culture plate while he was out on a two-week vacation. When he had returned, he noticed that the virus had started to grow mold. As Fleming keep experimenting on this new-found form of bacteria, it lead to be an early form of what is known today as “Penicillin”. Fleming continued to work on his research only for about three years until researchers from the University of Oxford took over. From it’s discovery in 1928 it has saved countless number of lives and was vital during World War II. It is said that penicillin, to this day, is the “most widely used antibiotic in the world” (Kalvaitis,