Penicillin Magic and Alexander Fleming
Posted on 10. Jan, 2010 by charles in Careers, Inventors, London, People, Scientists
Ever had an ear ache? Very painful, as I found out today. Fortunately, my local doctor was on duty. He quickly diagnosed an ear infection and prescribed a strong anti biotic. Within 30 minutes, I was able to find a pharmacy open and they had the medicine in stock. Maybe we take all these things for granted now, but it was not long ago that people suffered great pain and some died from infections.
On my list of amazing people is Alexander Fleming, who was born in Scotland. He was a doctor who decided to focus on anti bacterial research. In 1928, he saw something unusual in his laboratory. A mould had gathered around infectious bugs and was destroying them. A year later, one of his research papers was published on the topic, but few expressed interest. Fleming decided to call the material he had discovered penicillin.
It was ten years, before two other researchers took a real interest. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain found out how to make concentrated penicillin. It was another five years before enough was available to treat allied soldiers, as many were badly injured during the 1944 D Day landings to rid Europe of the Nazi Germans. The 1945 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Alexander Fleming and also Howard Florey and Ernst Chain for their great achievements.
Since then, penicillin has been developed in various forms to treat people with many infections. There is a danger that we take it for granted and overuse it. If that happens then we could return to the dark days when there was no cure for infections. Therefore, use penicillin only when you have to, as I am doing today.
Thanks to 55935853@N00 for the great flickr photo of the sign outside the pub at Paddington W 2, London near the hospital where Alexander Fleming worked.
Charolette Wuitschick
Mar 25th, 2010
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charles
Mar 26th, 2010
Thanks for your feedback and you can see also http://www.amazingpeopleclub.com
MarkSpizer
May 2nd, 2010
great post as usual!
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