Penicillin Discovery

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Inventions are not always begot from necessity; sometimes it is the twist of a thread on the loom of fate that produces the most amazing discoveries. The invention of penicillin-arguably one of the greatest medical discoveries of all time-was discovered completely by happenstance. Penicillin started as an accident, then was believed to contain medical potential, and experimented with to create the antibiotic widely used today.

First of all, penicillin was discovered by chance by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming. Mr. Fleming, who wasn’t known for keeping a neat or orderly lab, left for a month long vacation. According to, “Not-So-Dumb Luck” by Jessie Lane, when he came back, every dish he had left out in the open was covered in mold and looked them all over. On the contrary, he did not instantaneously notice the effect of the mold, Penicillium notatum. While showing the randomly picked culture to his former lab member, is when the mold perked his interest. It seemed, as it had grown, it killed the bacteria in the culture. Mr. Fleming wrote a paper on his findings but wasn’t able to determine how to use the penicillin in humans.
That is where Howard Florey and Ernst Chain come in. …show more content…

They believed there was medical potential in it. Chain and Florey’s research took place during World War II, in 1939 and 1940. According to, “The Discovery of Penicillin” by Brittany Connors, their effort was increased in discovering how penicillin could be used on humans because of the need for a drug to reduce bacterial infections in soldiers’ wounds. After they were able to demonstrate penicillin’s ability to kill infectious bacteria, they turned to the United States for help to be able to produce the quantities of penicillin needed for clinical human

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