preview

Dr. Howard Florey Report

Satisfactory Essays

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. …show more content…

Howard Florey, a future Nobel Laureate , and three of his partners at Oxford University began research on penicillin and found penicillin ability to swiftly kill deadly bacteria. Unfortunately the ongoing war against Germany in World War II had stretched the Allies resources to far so when it became time for human testing the importance was placed on weapons not medicine. Lucky, Florey had had a Flame ignited in him to finish the research and save lives. Florey asked the United States for help and was referred to the Peoria Labs and on July 9, 1941, Florey and his colleague Norman Heatley arrived in the U.S.A. along with one of the most important inventions in history, a small of penicillin for the Americans to work on. After a intense worldwide search for the best strain of penicillin it was a cantaloupe in a market Peoria itself that was improved and modeled for use outside of the lab. Finally, on November 26, 1941, Andrew J. Moyer, with assistance from one Dr. Heatley, had succeeded!
Since then penicillin has been used on the beaches on D-Day in Normandy to here on the homefront. As production increased the price plunged from priceless in 1940 to $.55 in 1946. To members of the British group, Dr. Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain were honored with the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945, Dr. Moyer was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame, and the British and Peoria Labs were named International Historic Chemical Landmarks. On May 25, 1948, Dr. Andrew Moyer was granted a patent for the method of mass production of

Get Access