Reference
- Fleming, Alexander (1881-1955)Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin, a substance produced by the mould Penicillium notatum and found to be effective in killing various pathogenic bacteria without harming the cells of the human body. Penicillin was the first antibiotic to be used in medicine. For this discovery, he shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who developed a method of producing penicillin in quantity.
Fleming was born on 6 August 1881 in Lochfield, Ayrshire, the son of a farmer. He was educated at Kilmarnock Academy and, after his father died in 1894, his poverty-stricken family sent him to London, where he first studied at the London Polytechnic Institute and then got a job as a clerk in a shipping office. While working there, and encouraged by his brother who was a doctor, he won a scholarship to study medicine at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, London, in 1902. He graduated four years later and remained at St Mary's in the bacteriology department for the rest of his career.
In his early years Fleming assisted the bacteriologist Almroth Wright, an association that continued when the two men were in the Royal Army Medical Corps and worked together in military hospitals during World War I. After the war, in 1918, Fleming returned to St Mary's as a lecturer, becoming director of the department of systematic bacteriology and assistant director of the inoculation department in 1920. He was appointed professor there and lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1928. He was knighted in 1944 and in 1946 became director of the Wright-Fleming Institute, where he continued to work until he retired in 1954. He died in London on 11 March 1955...
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Perspectives
Penicillin
Penicillin is the drug of the twentieth century. It was the first of the antibiotics that, for decades after the Second World War, underpinned a popular belief that infectious disease had at last met its match. With the emergence of 'superbugs' in recent decades these hopes have faded. Acrossthe world, we are warned that widespread antibiotic abuse will inexorably erode the drugs' efficacy and our own earlier confidence in them.Penicillin pulls these different but conjoined stories into a compelling narrative spanning the second half of the twentieth century. Using a wealth of new research, Robert Bud sets the discovery and use of penicillin in the broader context of social and cultural change across the world. Heexamines the drug's critical contributions to medicine and agriculture, and he investigates the global spread of resistant bacteria as antibiotic use continues to rise. Clearly written and highly topical, his book will be of great interest to historians, scientists, and anyone wishing to understandpenicillin's seismic impact on modern life.Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy Curated by Robert BudA new exhibition looking back over 50 years will explore changing attitudes to antibiotics and launch at the Science Museum on Thursday 10 May 2007 . In the 1950s antibiotics were cast as wonder drugs, but strains of bacteria resistant to penicillin were already widespread. They caused many deaths,most dramatically, infecting hospitalised victims of Asian flu in the autumn of 1957. Now we fear MRSA. How have attitudes, hopes and fears changed in half a century?Press information from Stephen Bromberg, Science Museum Press Office, stephen.bromberg@sciencemuseum.org.uk 020 7942 4352
The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat
The untold story of the discovery of the first wonder drug, the men who led the way, and how it changed the modern world The discovery of penicillin in 1928 ushered in a new age in medicine. But it took a team of Oxford scientists headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain four more years to develop it as the first antibiotic, and the most important family of drugs in the twentieth century. At once the world was transformed--major bacterial scourges such as blood poisoning and pneumonia, scarlet fever and diphtheria, gonorrhea and syphilis were defeated as penicillin helped to foster not only a medical revolution but a sexual one as well. In his wonderfully engaging book, acclaimed author Eric Lax tells the real story behind the discovery and why it took so long to develop the drug. He reveals the reasons why credit for penicillin was misplaced, and why this astonishing achievement garnered a Nobel Prize but no financial rewards for Alexander Fleming, Florey, and his team. "The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat" is the compelling story of the passage of medicine from one era to the next and of the eccentric individuals whose participation in this extraordinary accomplishment has, until now, remained largely unknown.
Penicillin
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Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident, yet he didn't realize its importance. In 1938, researchers rediscovered the life-saving properties of penicillin. Some content in this video may be objectionable. The consumption of illegal substances is discussed or depicted in this video.
Fleming's Penicillin
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowSeveral factors made it possible for Alexander Fleming to "discover" penicillin. Penicillin was not easily absorbed into the body, so Fleming turned his attention elsewhere.
Alexander Fleming: Pharmacologist
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowAlexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize for his accidental discovery of penicillin,which has almost eliminated many terrible diseases.
Online Resources
- The Development of Penicillin: Genesis of a Famous AntibioticERIC LAX'S BREEZY ACCOUNT of the development of penicillin includes biographical material on the three Nobel Laureates, Ernst Chain, Alexander Fleming, and Howard Florey, paraphrased from existing full-length biographies; describes Fleming's original observation and the development work by Florey's group at Oxford; and concludes with industrial production. Another Florey biographer,T. L.Williams, adds an anecdote recorded by neither Lax nor Macfarlane: when Lady Florey mentioned the phrase to Dr. Sherwood Taylor, Director of the Science Museum and a staunch Catholic, he remarked, "How surprised he would have been if it had been one!" (Williams 1984, p. 112) Miracle or not, the tireless work of the Oxford group transformed Fleming's lucky observation into a valuable weapon against infectious disease.
- Fleming's UnfinishedIt is often suggested that, soon after he discovered penicillin, Alexander Fleming lost interest in what became the most important of all the antibiotics. Fleming's notebooks, however, show that he continued working with penicillin throughout the 1930s, even to the point when Florey and Chain became interested in it. During this period, Fleming isolated new airborne molds and checked them for their ability to produce antibacterial agents, and he also investigated other examples of microbial antagonism, such as bacteriophages. Unfortunately, none of this work was published. What follows is a simulation, based largely upon Fleming's notebooks, of a paper that he might have written in early 1940. This version of "Fleming's Unfinished" should once and for all dismiss the view that he failed fully to recognize the significance of his famous discovery.
- What if Fleming had not discovered penicillin?What would have happened had Alexander Fleming not discovered penicillin in 1928? Perhaps the obvious answer is that, someone else would have discovered penicillin during 1930s and the Oxford group, would still have purified it sometime in the early 1940s. Here, however, in this counterfactual account of the penicillin story, it is argued that without Fleming, penicillin might still be undiscovered and the antibiotic age would never have dawned. As a result, many of the recent developments in medicine, such as organ transplantation, might have been delayed or, at best, made more hazardous. Penicillin might have come onto the scene a few years later but, had Fleming overlooked the discovery, it seems certain that penicillin would not have saved countless Allied lives, during and after D-Day. Instead of having enjoyed fifty and more years of the antibiotic age, it is argued here, that we would have had to rely upon highly developed sulphonamides, so-called “supasulfas”, and other chemically-derived antibacterial drugs.
Alexander Fleming: Penicillin
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowRobert Fleming noticed a mold that killed bacteria on one of his petri dishes. During World War II, Dr. Howard Florey and Ernest Chain isolated and mass produced penicillin.