History of penicillin

Alexander Fleming 's devotion to the discovery of penicillin in the history of penicillin

After the war, Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory. Alexander Fleming decided to devote himself to the quest for a more effective antibiotic. Alexander Fleming theorized that the answer lay in fighting the invading organisms not with a caustic chemical that also harmed the patient but with an organic substance. Alexander Fleming also believed that substances or secretions found in hte human body held the key. By 1921, this line of inquiry left him to lysozyme, a secretion from human tears which proved successful against some bacteria, but not against the most dangerous ones such as staphylococcus, streptococcus, and gonococcus.

Alexander Fleming 's experiments that led him to the discovery of penicillin

Alexander Fleming, who is credited with inventing penicillin, continued his experiments with various organic substances which he cultured in small glass Petri dishes in his laboratory. Occasionally, these Petri dishes would become infected with mold spores and bacteria that naturally exist in the air, and Alexander Fleming would have to clean out the Petri dishes and start over.

One day in 1928, however, he noticed that on one dish continuing staphylococci, the bacteria had been attacked by a particular mold. He began studying this mold and discovered that it dissolved nearly every bacteria with which it came in contact. This mold, Penicillium notatum, led to penicillin, the heretofore elusive antibiotic.

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