The discovery of penicillin 88 years ago changed the face of medicine. This first big antibiotic was tested in the battlefields of World War I, and later revolutionised the field of infection control. Till then, hospitals had countless patients dying of blood poisoning as a result of even a small cut or scratch.
Alexander Fleming was born in 1881 in Lochfield near Darvel in Scotland. Born to a family of farmers, Fleming was one of four children. He lost his father when he was seven. When he was 20, he received an inheritance on the death of his uncle, John Fleming. He used it to get into a medical school. He scored the highest marks in all of the U.K. in the medical entrance test. He graduated with distinction from London’s St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School and became a researcher and later a lecturer of Bacteriology in the same institution.
Fleming’s first big discovery was the enzyme lysozyme; this prevents some microbes from causing us harm. It gives us natural immunity to a number of diseases. Nowadays, lysozyme is used as a preservative for food and wine!
Accidental discovery
When the researcher returned after a month-long vacation with his wife and son in September 1928, he noticed that mould had developed accidentally (an assistant had left a window open) on a set of culture dishes used to grow the staphylococci germ. The mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. Fleming experimented further and named the active substance first “mould juice”! Welcome to the world of antibiotics!
Penicillin was first used on thousands of patients to kill a variety of bacteria as in scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria. The scientist worked on the drug, but could not produce it in large, concentrated quantities. In the early 1940s, a large team of scientists from Oxford University led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain finally made it into the medicine we know of it as today. In 1945, Fleming shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with the two scientists.
You will be surprised to hear that no fewer than 30 European and American universities conferred honorary doctorates on Fleming. More striking is when he visited the US, chemical companies offered him a personal gift of $1,00,000 as a mark of respect and gratitude for his work; and the scientist donated the amount to the research labs of his medical school.
Fleming was knighted in 1944. His only son Robert became a general practitioner. The penicillin discoverer breathed his last in 1955 due to a heart attack.
Urban legend
The popular story of Churchill’s father paying for Fleming’s education after the latter’s father saved young Winston from death, is false. The Nobel laureate described the story as a “wondrous fable”!
