Penicillin and the Antibiotics Revolution Global History

Abstract

Alexander Fleming was one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century for his discovery of Penicillin '' It was the discovery that would change the course of history. The active ingredient in the mold, which Fleming named penicillin, turned out to be an infection-fighting agent of enormous potency'' A revolutionary development in science is a change in the way scientists perceive a certain idea or belief. The finding of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 was a revolutionary development in the field of science. The discovery revolutionized the way infections were treated as well as impacted the scientific field, the medical field, the pharmaceuticals industry, and all humanity. Alexander Fleming's discovery of Penicillin sparked the development of antibiotics, which has continued to save People's lives since the revolution, making him a revolutionary figure. Despite the fact that Fleming was not only solely responsible for the revolutionary development, it was also his discovery of Penicillin that led to the development of antibiotics. In October 1945 Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey, and Ernest Chain each received an almost identical telegram from Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel prize committee, these messages read, was pleased to inform the three British - based scientists that they had been awarded the Nobel prize for Medicine, for the discovery of Penicillin and its curative action in various disease1. This was not surprising news, In Fact, a year earlier, two major newspapers had informed their readers that Fleming would receive the prestigious award in 19442. Although reporters' stories were a year a hand of their time, they were right that the global scientific community had generally agreed that the world's first antibiotics were a landmark in medical history worthy of Nobel prize recognition. While the committee's decision to award the Nobel prize to the scientists who had developed penicillin was not controversial, the precise choice of whom to award the prize to was more fraught. The uncertainty arose because of the long and complicated process of drug development. The story began in 1928 when Alexander Fleming a Scottish bacteriologist working at St. Mary's Hospital Medical school in London, noticed that a specific strain of mold, Penicillium notatum, inhibited the growth of bacteria setting out to understand more about the mold s unusual properties, Fleming conducted additional experiments concluded that the antibiotics solution that he had made from the mold into a useable drug, convinced that further research on the substance would not be fruitful, Fleming turned to other matters. For a decade, Fleming's discovery attracted little attention then in 1938, two scientists working at the University of Oxford's Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. Howard Flory, an Australian Pathologist, and Ernest Chain, a German biochemist began researching a selection of antibacterial compounds. Over the next two years, chain and Florey, and their oxford colleagues experimented on Penicillium notatum. During that time, the scientists made several important discoveries and thwarted Fleming. By the spring of 1940, Florey and chain had developed a drug, which they mice. The following year, they carried out the first preliminary clinical trials on oxford. After the second world war, the battle for credit also acquired important national overtones. In telling the story of Penicillin's development, journalists and politicians incorporated the drug into celebratory narratives about national inventiveness, innovation, and character. In Britain and the united states' particularly myths of corporate ingenuity, economic opportunities missed and discoveries stolen would shape subsequent antibiotics development and the global production of Pharmaceuticals.