- Penicillin was
the first antibiotic substance, which is still use. Its history is based mostly
in accidents, luck and to incidentals, but despite of this, it’s still one of
the most important medicines that can be use to diseases caused by bacterial
infections.
- Sir Alexander
Fleming who is consider to invent the penicillin was doing his research during
the First World War, concentrating mostly to the wound healing and to the
natural protection against infections. During the First World War the wounds
were cleaned, but too strongly, which affected to the natural protection,
resulting the decrease of this most important protection against infections,
without doing much to the bacterial infections.
- The early part
of 1920’s Fleming worked among this natural protection and managed in 1922 to
isolate a substance from a tear, that protected humans and animals from
infections. This substance was also found from other bodily fluids. This
substance however didn’t help to fight against bacterial infections. The
actual date or time, when penicillin was discovered, is a mystery as Fleming
concealed the date and time through out his life. However it is known, that in
September 1929, Fleming got back home from a short holiday and was inspecting
his cultures.
- To his astonishment, to one of the glass plates, which had contained a staphylococcus culture, a mould had grown which had destroyed the whole culture. Fleming took a sample from this mould and a year later published a writing, which identified and told the chain of events, which lead to the discovery of Penicillium Rubrum.
- Despite the
fact that the discovery was a remarkable, the science community didn’t pay
much attention to it. Fleming himself didn’t either continue his research with
penicillin and it time passed to the year of 1938, when a group of English
researchers started to really study and develop the manufacturing of penicillin.
The work was hard and the first experiments didn’t produce nearly any results.
It took till 1940 when the Second World War had already started, when the
researcher managed to isolate, clean and stabilize penicillin in a laboratory.
This difficulty of processing penicillin was one of the factors, why Alexander
Fleming didn’t believe, that penicillin could have any clinical value.
- Penicillin was injected into a person for a first time in history on 27th of January 1941. The woman, who had no infections in her body, got a heavy fever from the penicillin and the next experiment resulted a similar result. The researcher were finally able to isolate a pyrogen from the penicillin, which had no therapeutic meaning and only resulted a heavy fever in the patient. After this discovery the pyrogen test came compulsory to all penicillin preparations.
- Despite the
fact that the Second World War had started in September 1939 and penicillin was
ready for use year and a half later, the English government and the English
pharmaceutical companies were not interested or reacted to the pleas of the
researcher to start the mass production of penicillin.
- In USA, the
penicillin however was considered very interesting and when Japan attacked to
Pearl Harbour, the means to mass-produce penicillin already existed. It took
nearly three years to produce penicillin in sufficient quantities. During the
early part of the 1943, there was penicillin, which would have been sufficient
to treat a hundred patients, but when the Allies landed to Normandy in June
1944, there was already some 300 billion units of penicillin per month ready for
use. Penicillin saved the life of many American and English soldiers on the
French coast. When the Second World War ended in Europe in May 1945, there was
already sufficient amount of penicillin to satisfy the military needs and to
start to use it with the civilians.
- Sir Alexander Fleming won a Nobel price for the discovery of penicillin, although there was already some criticism heard during that time, that penicillin was ineffective and dangerous, when bigger dosages were given to the patients.
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