Miraculous Mold Juice
Alexander Fleming pushed open the door to his laboratory at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. It was September of 1928. The morning sun filtered through the rooftops of London, falling through the window on a stray Petri dish. Fleming noticed the dish, sighed, and stepped over to clean it up. It hadn’t been put in the incubator before he went on vacation; the lid wasn’t even on.
Then he did a double-take.
There were the colonies of the bacteria he’d been growing. But a spot of mold had sprouted there too—and the mold had kept any bacteria from growing around it.
Fleming’s mind raced. Scarlet fever. Meningitis. Pneumonia.
These deadly infections were all caused by bacteria. Could this mold stop these diseases in their tracks?
He jumped into action. The first step was identifying the type of mold in his dish: it came from the genus Penicillium. Next, he performed more research. Then he published the results.
He discovered that the juice from the mold was a bacteria killer.
He called this juice
“penicillin.”
After a lot of hard work, the scientists were able to get the penicillin out of the mold, but not enough. The tiny amounts they could extract were miraculous. In experiments, it protected mice from deadly infections. Now, they needed to figure out a way to make more penicillin, but how?
ONE OF THE OXFORD SCIENTISTS, DOROTHY CROWFOOT HODGKIN, MADE A HUGE DISCOVERY. SHE WAS ABLE TO IDENTIFY THR CHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL STRUCTURE OF PENICILLIN, AND THIS MADE IT POSSIBLE TO EXTRACT IT.
With a war to focus on, England couldn’t spare resources for penicillin research—so the scientists turned to the United States. They found the interest and the manufacturing power they needed. In 1941, they didn’t have enough penicillin to treat even one patient. But only two years later, America was producing enough penicillin for the entire Allied army.
Fleming eventually won the Nobel Prize.
“I did not invent penicillin,” he liked to say. “Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident.”
And yet, his discovery changed medical science for good. Penicillin was the first antibiotic, a medicine that fights infections.
In World War II alone, penicillin lowered the chances of dying from bacterial pneumonia from 18 percent to just 1 percent. Plus, it set the stage for the development of dozens of other antibiotics. Before these medicines, an accidental scratch from a rosebush could infect and kill someone. Today, a quick trip to the doctor and an antibiotic prescription cures infections by the millions.
FINDING THE RIGHT STRAIN OF PENICILLIUM MOLD FOR MASS PRODUCTION WASN'T EASY! CREDIT GOES TO ANOTHER HAPPY ACCIDENT: SOMEONE BROUGHT A MOLDY CANTALOUPE THEY'D FOUND AT A MAKET IN ILLINOIS. THAT MOLD MADE SIX TIMES MORE PENICILLIN THAN FLEMING'S ORIGINAL STRAIN.
Thanks to a forgotten Petri dish, some rotten fruit, and the powers of observation, Alexander Fleming made an amazing discovery that has saved many lives!