Penicillin essays

Penicillin essays Penicillin: The Bacterial Cell Killer Before the discovery of penicillin, bacteria-caused diseases took a heavy toll on the world population. During the 1800s there were only limited ideas about how diseases were generated in the human body. Two men, Pasteur and Koch, had clearly shown the connection between disease and bacteria, but not many people believed in the work they were doing. (Brown, 1996, P.1). Around the late 1850s, a few people were beginning to take seriously the idea that diseases were caused by unseen things. A twenty-one year old medical student in France made a chance discovery that a substance produced by a mold could apparently kill bacteria. This medical student was Ernest Duchesne. This work was mainly ignored, and eventually forgotten. (Brown, 1996, P.1). In 1928 penicillin was accidentally discovered by Dr. Alexander Flemming at St. Marys Hospital in London. Dr. Flemming had been working to find ways to kill bacteria in infected wounds. When Flemming returned from a vacation, he found that he had left the lid off one of his Petri dishes. He noticed that some kind of fungus was growing on his dish. Instead of throwing it away, he examined it first. While examining the fungus he notice that there was a zone around it that was completely devoid of bacteria. He reasoned that this growing fungus must be producing something that was killing the bacteria. Flemming identified the fungus as Penicillium notatum. He named the material that killed the bacteria penicillin. After researching it he found that although it killed many different kinds of bacteria, it was very unstable and sometimes didnt work. It was not until the second World War (1939-1945) that two British scientist, Florey and Chain, managed to purify the formula. (Bro wn, 1996; Wong, 1998) Even though the efforts and resources of many people were used to try and produce large quantities of penicillin, it so...