Alexander Fleming has revolutionized medicine forever thanks to a “mold smell”

The smell of mold was a strange “mold juice” on Alexander Fleming’s Petri sign. From there, by accident, the history of medicine has changed forever. The first antibiotic in history was created: Penicillin.

97 years ago. On September 28, 1928, Alexander Fleming He woke up with a strange mold to grow on his Petri sign.

As a recall, the Scottish physicist and microbiologist had been experimenting in a very small room, with 1 square meter, in a tower inside the St Mary’s Hospitalin London.

The scientist cultivated bacteria of infected hospital patients; He left the cultures for two or three weeks. Then he inspected each sign to see if something interesting had grown on her before he setting it out.

Penicillin’s discovery occurred after Fleming was two weeks away and left a bacteria sign out in the laboratory by accident. When he returned, the scientist noticed in a green mold stain intersecting the gold-yellow bacterial colonies.

The fungus called Penicillium marked had killed the bacteria. This substance would form Base of the first antibiotic.

Revolution in Medicine by Accident

“When I woke up shortly after the dawn of September 28, 1928, certainly I did not plan to revolutionize all medicine Upon discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, ”Fleming said later, quoted by Live Science.

Fleming determined that the “mold juice” came from a fungal species that the scientist eventually identified as Penicillium.

The following year, when he described his discovery at a meeting, Fleming was surprised by disinterest of your fellow doctors.

In addition, isolating the dodge “mold juice” also proved to be a challenge, so Discovery was stagnant for a decade.

Only in 1939, scientists Howard Florey e Ernst Chain They returned to pay attention to that substance. His investigation team isolated the mold’s penicillin, tested the yellowish and pulverulent substance to cure a handful of patients. However, the compound was still relatively unclean.

In 1942, Fleming was treating a sick young man who was sick with severe meningitis. Found that the dust killed the sick bacterial infectionand called Florey and Chain to obtain part of his reservation, even though he was not purified. He injected her into the boy’s spinal cord and the patient recovered.

After this miracle recovery, Fleming was convinced that penicillin needed to be massive. He made this proposal to the government, and quickly emerged a joint effort between the US and the United Kingdom to produce mass substance. In 1945, the first antibiotic was widely available.

Fleming, Florey and Chain would win the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in the discovery, isolation and production of penicillin.

In 1964, Dorothy Hodgkin would win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry By elucidating its crystalline structure, which helped chemists conceive posterior antibiotics.

According to Live Science, the estimates point out that since its discovery, penicillin has already saved 500 million lives.