The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s began the era of antibiotics and is recognized as one of the greatest advances in medicine. Penicillin and the initial recognition of its potential was discovered in the U.K., but, due to World War II, the U.S. played the major role in developing large-scale production of the drug. Before its introduction there was no effective treatment for infections such as pneumonia, gonorrhea or rheumatic fever. Hospitals were full of people with blood poisoning contracted from a cut or a scratch, and doctors could do little for them but wait and hope.
Antibiotics are compounds that are capable of killing, or inhibiting, competing microbial species. In 1928, penicillin, the first true antibiotic, was discovered by Alexander Fleming, Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital in London.
Returning from holiday, Fleming began to sort through petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus, bacteria that cause boils, sore throats and abscesses. However, one dish showed the bacteria as dotted colonies except for one area where a blob of mold was growing. The zone immediately around the mold was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth.
Fleming found that his "mold juice" was capable of killing a wide range of harmful bacteria. He then set his assistants, Stuart Craddock and Frederick Ridley, the difficult task of isolating pure penicillin from the mold juice, but it proved to be very unstable.
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 1939, just when wartime conditions were beginning to make research especially difficult.
In 1940, Florey carried out vital experiments, showing that penicillin could protect mice against infection from the bacteria. In 1941, a 43-year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin after developing a life-threatening infection. 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. Better results followed with other patients though and soon there were plans to make penicillin available for British troops on the battlefield.
In the war, penicillin proved its mettle and helped reduce the number of deaths and amputations of troops. Throughout history, the major killer in wars had been infection rather than battle injuries. In World War I, the death rate from bacterial pneumonia was 18 percent; in World War II, it fell to less than 1 percent. According to records, there were only 400 million units of penicillin available during the first five months of 1943; by the time World War II ended, U.S. companies were making 650 billion units a month.
By Donte
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