Alexander Fleming

Alexander Fleming

Alexander Fleming made one of the greatest findings of all time. With the discovery of penicillin, the medical world was changed forever. Many illnesses that killed thousands of people are now curable because of Alexander Fleming.

He was born in a rural part of Scotland with 8 brothers and sisters. His family farmed 800 acres of land, but Fleming didn’t want to go into the farming business. When he was old enough, he moved to London and started school at Polytechnic School at Regent Street (PBS, 1998). He then attended St. Mary’s Medical School and specialized as a surgeon. Soon after, he turned to bacteriology for no particular reason.

BBC

What’s surprising is that Fleming’s detection of penicillin was by accident. He had been growing staph bacteria in Petri dishes in his lab and had them piled in his sink. He was just about to start cleaning them out when he noticed that in one of the Petri dishes a mold had started to grow in it and it had killed all of the staph bacteria around it. He learned that the mold came from the penicillium family. This mold turned out to be a powerful means to fight infections (Ho, 1999). A way was found to synthetically produce this potent medicine and it started to be given to patients.

Penicillin has changed many people’s lives. Without its discovery in the 1920’s, ailments like tuberculosis, gangrene and syphilis would have killed many people. Penicillin is still being used today and people all around the world are reaping its benefits. Since I will be heading into the medical profession when I get out of college it’s nice to know where something so powerful came from.

The discovery of penicillin was one of the best surprises the science and medical fields could hope for. With this, millions of lives have been saved and will continue to be saved. Thanks to Alexander Fleming, our world will be a healthier one.