dec 22, 1939 - PENCILLIN

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Returning from holiday on September 3, 1928, Fleming began to sort through petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus, bacteria that cause boils, sore throats and abscesses. He noticed something unusual on one dish. It was dotted with colonies, save for one area where a blob of mold was growing. The zone immediately around the mold—later identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatum—was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth.

Following this he published findings on his mystical 'mould juice' in 1929 but did nothing of it after it.

It was Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and their colleagues at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University who turned penicillin from a laboratory curiosity into a life-saving drug. Their work on the purification and chemistry of penicillin began in earnest in 1939, just when wartime conditions were beginning to make research especially difficult. To carry out a program of animal experiments and clinical trials the team needed to process up to 500 liters a week of mold filtrate. They began growing it in a strange range of culture vessels such as baths, bedpans, milk churns and food tins. Later, a customized fermentation vessel was designed for ease of removing and, to save space, renewing the broth beneath the surface of the mold. A team of "penicillin girls" was employed, at £2 a week, to inoculate and generally look after the fermentation. In effect, the Oxford laboratory was being turned into a penicillin factory.

Albert Alexander became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin. He had scratched the side of his mouth while pruning roses, and had developed a life-threatening infection with huge abscesses affecting his eyes, face, and lungs. Penicillin was injected and within days he made a remarkable recovery. But supplies of the drug ran out and he died a few days later.

Their discovery eventually became the second highest fund the US government backed donating $800,000,000 to help Penicillin become widespread. On D-Day '44 every American landing on Normandy had Penicillin in their med kits.

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