Alexander Fleming The History Of Penicillin

Dr. Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and their peers at Oxford University had just begun research on how to test penicillin’s ability to kill bacteria. According to the text, “The History of Penicillin” it says , “The British scientists could not produce the quantities of penicillin needed for clinical trials on humans and turned to the United States for help.” That means Florey was going to need help because Britain’s resources were running low due to the war. Their solution came in the form of the Peoria Lab where scientists were already were working on a similar process. After several years, their work finally paid off. Scientists finally made a small sample of penicillin they could test with, The same text from above says, “Pumping air into deep vats containing corn steep liquor and the addition of other key ingredients was shown to produce faster growth and larger amounts of penicillin than the previous surface-growth method.” This was one of the first methods scientists used to mass produce penicillin. The hard work still wasn’t over though. They still had to make mass production of penicillin a lot better. Besides in reality, no one has actually mass produced a huge amount yet which made penicillin very expensive, no one until Andrew J. Moyer at least. Based on the article, “The History of Penicillin”, it says, “By November 26, 1941, Andrew J. Moyer, the lab’s expert on the nutrition of molds, had succeeded, with the assistance of Dr. heatley, in increasing the yields of penicillin 10 times.” So penicillin was soon mass produced in 1943, saving thousands of soldiers and reducing penicillin prices. The scientists responsible for this major discovery were soon rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize and Moyer was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame according to the article, “The Discovery of Penicillin” The History of Penicillin also says,”On May 25, 1948, Andrew J. Moyer was

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 1929 Fleming published his findings to a British Journal of Experimental Pathology, referencing that penicillin had potential of therapeutic benefits. Dr. Fleming was never able to purify his samples of penicillin, but he became the first person to publish the news of its germ-killing power. Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley expanded on Fleming 's work in 1938, at Oxford University.

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

“Penicillin is effective in lowering mortality in gas gangrene after adequate excision of devitalized tissue, but is relatively ineffective without such supportive surgical excision. This final appraisal of penicillin therapy for gas gangrene received British and American concurrence.” Penicillin was successful in treating gas gangrene, something physicians would have said “impossible” in 1914, during The First World War. Then, the only thing doctors could do was watch their patients die as they succumbed to their infections. Now, because of penicillin, there was a way to save them, and that is why penicillin was so important. The fact that the Allies were the only ones who had access to it added to its significance. Also, the fact that the Allies tried as hard as they did to prevent Germany from getting it

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

In this case, the medicine was accidently discovered by a bacteriologist named Alexander Fleming. So Fleming was on a one month vacation, and he didn’t keep a neat and clean lab. In the source “The Discovery of Penicillin” the article says “it’s possible that one of these mold spores would interact with one of the cultures.” When the mold grew, it seem that it has killed the bacteria in the culture. Later on Fleming wrote a paper on his discoveries, and that the penicillin was the antibacterial

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

Antibiotics were introduced to people in 1929, which could restrain the normal growth of the other bacteria called antimicrobial activity, was found by British scientist Alexander Fleming by coincidence. Then scientists used antibiotics, to cure injured soldiers and got great success during the World War. With the efforts of many scientists in the past half of the century, thousand kinds of antibiotics are found, which could be natural, semi-synthetic or synthetic, and many of them are used in medical field successfully.

Before Alexander Fleming founded penicillin,a French medical student Ernest Duchesne first noticed penicillin. In 1897, he first recorded his finding on a piece of paper differentiating molds and microbes. Ernest first came across clues for developing penicillin when he was in the Military Health Service School in Arabia. He saw that the stable boys at the hospital kept their saddles in dark and damp rooms to intentionally let mold grow.When Ernest ask the reason for these peculiar actions, the stable boys told him that the mold would heal the saddle sore on horse.Ernest then take this information and decided to test it on guinea pigs. Ernest Duchesne extracted substances from penicillium glaucum and successfully cured typhoids in guinea pigs,

A group of Oxford scientists built upon the discovery by Alexander Flemming in order to mass produce penicillin. In the course of his research, Sir Flemming noticed that the secretions of a certain strain of mold, Penicillium notatum, killed surrounding bacteria. The purification of penicillin from the secretions, however, proved difficult. In the late 1930s, Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and others at Oxford University, “turned penicillin from a laboratory curiosity into a life-saving drug” (American Chemical). For their work on penicillin, Flemming, Florey and Chain were awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The first penicillin samples were unrefined and produced in milk jugs (Quinn, 427), but within five years, its distillation occurred at the industrial level. This was accomplished as a result of the implementation of an open network of information exchange. Roswell Quinn writes, “Mold samples, top-secret reports, and scientists began flying all over the country and, in some cases, the world” (Quinn, 427). Additionally, the cost of the drug’s development raised no concerns

In 1928 penicillin discovery showed to have enormously success in controlling infections caused by bacteria. Soon microbiologist learnt how to predict the antibiotic effect

The patient began to recover after receiving the drug, but unfortunately supplies ran out due to their inability to produce it in large quantities. By 1942, a number of lives had been saved using small scale production of penicillin in Oxford. Mass production of the drug was not possible without the help of the large drugs companies. By 1944 the miracle drug became available for civilian use.