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The Discovery Of Penicillin In The Medical World

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The Discovery of Penicillin The discovery of penicillin was a huge milestone for the medical world and start of the antibiotic age. Penicillin was discovered by physician Alexander Fleming in 1928 and since then has been purified and used to treat many infectious diseases, saving millions of lives (Jacobs). Though the purification took a very long time, penicillin proved to be very helpful in treating common, but lethal infections (U.S. Library of Medicine). Since penicillin was discovered just before WWII, it was able to save many lives during the war. Soon after the discovery of penicillin, doctors referred to it as a “miracle drug” due to it’s ability to stop rapidly growing infections and save lives (NHS Choices).
Penicillin was discovered …show more content…

It saved many lives in WWII and gained a great deal of attention when it was proven successful (PBS). The first truly successful test of the purified penicillin on the police officer really helped scientists progress in purifying penicillin (Jacobs). The next two tests of penicillin were on a teenage boy with a staphylococcal infection and an infant with a severe urinary tract infection. The drug proved to be completely successful in clearing up both of these infections. Doctors were so amazed at these recoveries they called penicillin a “miracle drug” …show more content…

The first step of making penicillin is growing the penicillium mold (US National Library of Medicine).. Scientists discovered shortly after the discovery of penicillin that they could easily grow the mold using deep fermentation in huge tanks with sugar and a bunch of other chemicals (NHS). After they grow the mold, they extract the penicillin from the mold, which can take awhile (US National Library of Medicine). Lastly, they perform the hardest step, purifying the penicillin so that it can be sent to hospitals (PBS).
Penicillin works to stop infections by a fairly simple, but also kind of confusing and hard to perform procedure of destroying the bacteria’s cell wall. It does this by activating an enzyme called transpeptidase. As soon as the transpeptidase comes in contact with the cell it starts deconstruction of the cell wall, which causes the organelles to become exposed and the cell to die. Penicillin usually takes a few days to start completely deconstruct the cell wall and kill all of the other bacteria cells, but as soon as it has broken down, the bacteria cell instantly dies (US National Library of Medicine,

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