original template by Ray Lam, Fall 97

revised template by Rachel Shorey and Steve Bergen 2/9/98

Penicillin is one of the most important medical discoveries of the twentieth century. Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in September 1928 at the Saint MaryÕs Hospital School in London. The ÒWonder DrugÓ, Penicillin was discovered accidentally when Fleming removed the cover of a deadly bacteria that he had been studying. A mold had formed on the exposed culture, and Fleming would have thrown it out if he had not noticed something very peculiar about the mold. The mold seemed to cause the bacteria to disappear! Fleming kept the strain of mold alive and tested it on laboratory animals. He realized that this mold might be able to help fight many diseases. In 1929 he published a medical paper that proved how this mold was a powerful germ killer, yet would not damage skin tissue. Although this was a great discovery, it was not useful because chemists were not able to extract enough pure concentrated Penicillin to use in medicine. The miraculous mold was kept by Fleming, but the world of science nearly forgot about it. In 1938, ten years after PenicillinÕs discovery, a group of scientists from Oxford University remembered FlemingÕs paper about Penicillin. This group was led by Howard Florey, a Pathologist and Ernst B. Chain, a biochemist. World War II interrupted this research, but methods for the mass production and purification of Penicillin were developed in the U.S. in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fleming was knighted in 1944 and in 1945 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine with Florey and Chain.