Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928. It is a wonder drug as it is an ideal germ- killer. Unlike all the other chemical antiseptics, it has no toxic effects at all.
In the beginning of this Century, wound-infection was a serious problem. During the time of world war 2, thousand of soldier died without any proper treatment. Antiseptic and Aseptic Methods we're useful to a limited extent. There was no antiseptic medicine to kill the germs which were already in human body. In those days, Fleming was working as a doctor. In 1922, he discovered lysozyme which was a natural antiseptic manufactured by the body. This Discovery led to the discovery of penicillin.
In 1928, Fleming was working as a professor of Bacteriology in the University of London. In his laboratory at St. Mary's, he was carrying out a series of experiment on the common germ called staphy lococcus. The plates were kept covered but to examine them under a microscope, he had to take the cover off. He was growing colonies of germ on plates spread with agar. When he took off the cover of a culture- plates, a mould spore came flying through the window, and dropped on the plat. Having settled on the culture plate, the mould began to grow. And almost at once, the microbes or germs round it began to disappear. Fleming put aside the work he was doing and began to investigate.
Fleming made a pure culture of the mould and tired it's effect on other bacteria. The result was the same. The next step was to produce the anti-bacteria substance free of the mould. He did this by plating the mould on a meat-broth. It grew on the surface as a felt-like mass and turned the broth yellow. After a week's growth, the fluid was strained through a fine filter. Then result were as favourable as before. Fleming concluded that he had discovered another antiseptic with greater possibilities than lysozyme. He named it penicillin after penicillin, genus of moulds. It was about three times as strong as carbolic acid but had no toxic effects on leucoctyes, the white cells of blood.
Later scientists started work on this project and produced a practical concerntration of penicillin in 1943. When the world came to know of this life-saving drug, Fleming was showered with honour and rewards. He was knighted in 1944, and awarded then Noble prize for Medicine in 1945. But he was a great man; he never felt proud of his work. He always said that pencillin was manufactured by Nature; he had only discovered it and that also by chance.
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