How it began
Alexander Fleming was Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital in London. Returning from holiday on September 3, 1928, he began sorting through petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus and noticed the effect of a mold on them. He identified the mold as belonging to the genus Penicillium. After some months of calling the active substance mold juice, he named it penicillin on 7 March 1929.
How it works
Fleming found that his mold juice was capable of killing a wide range of harmful bacteria, including streptococcus, meningococcus and the diphtheria bacillus. The substance is produced by the mold itself. What he found was later named benzylpenicillin, or penicillin G.
How it spread
At Oxford University, Ernst Chain found Fleming's 1929 article and proposed to his supervisor, Howard Florey, that he try to isolate the compound. The Oxford team published its first results in 1940 and turned penicillin into a therapeutic drug during World War II. Large-scale production depended on United States pharmaceutical companies and the Northern Regional Research Laboratory, using deep-tank fermentation, with support from British and American wartime programs.
What lasted
The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s began the era of antibiotics and is recognized as one of the great advances in therapeutic medicine. Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Fleming was modest about his part and praised Florey and Chain for turning a laboratory curiosity into a practical drug. He also warned about antibiotic resistance.
Where it stands today
The laboratory at St Mary's Hospital where Fleming made the discovery houses the Fleming Museum. The discovery and development of penicillin was designated an International Historic Chemical Landmark on November 19, 1999. Reviews of its history now stress the problem of antibiotic resistance and the need for new antimicrobial drugs.
