21 Aug /13

Penicillin

In the 1870s the physicist Joseph Lister noted the existence of a type of mould, penicillin notatum. But Lister’s focus was on other fields and he took his investigation no further. Independent work by Ernest Duchesne in Lyon identified the healing properties of penicillin but Duchesne’s work stopped short of proving its ability to stop bacterial growth. This final step was left to Alexander Fleming, who spent most of his life working on the industrialisation of this revolutionary cure for diseases such as syphilis, tuberculosis and gangrene. With Fleming’s breakthrough the word entered the mainstream as a medicine, not merely a type of mould.

Today 12 million kilograms of penicillin are produced every year and its use is a key driver in the longer and healthier lives we all lead. In the United States the mortality rate for infectious bacterial disease is only 5% of the level of a century ago.

To the end of his life Fleming was modest, stating ‘I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident.’ His contemporaries rated him more highly, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in 1945. Posterity has also recognised his contribution. In 1999 Time Magazine named Fleming as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.