Alexander Fleming

Alexander Fleming

Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy...

 was the first to suggest that the Penicillium

Penicillium

Penicillium is a genus of ascomycetous fungi of major importance in the natural environment as well as food and drug production. Members of the genus produce penicillin, a molecule that is used as an antibiotic, which kills or stops the growth of certain kinds of bacteria inside the body...

 mould must secrete an antibacterial substance, and the first to isolate the active substance which he named penicillin

Penicillin

Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They include penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V....

, but he was not the first to use its properties. Others involved in the mass production of penicillin include Ernst Chain, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley

Norman Heatley

Norman George Heatley was a member of the team of Oxford University scientists who developed penicillin.He was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and as a boy was an enthusiastic sailor of a small boat on the River Deben; an experience which gave him a lifelong love of sailing...

.

Year	Location	Descriptions
Ancient times	Greece & India	Many ancient cultures, including the ancient Greeks Ancient Greece Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...  and ancient India History of India The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from... , already used moulds and other plants to treat infection. http://www.experiment-resources.com/history-of-antibiotics.html This worked because some moulds produce antibiotic substances. However, they could not distinguish or distill the active component in the moulds.
"traditional medicine"	Serbia & Greece	There are many old remedies where mould is involved. In Serbia and in Greece, mouldy bread was a traditional treatment for wounds and infections.
"traditional"	Russia	Russian peasants used warm soil as treatment for infected wounds.
c. 150 BC	Sri Lanka	Soldiers in the army of king Dutugemunu (161–137 BC) are recorded to have stored oil cakes (a traditional Sri Lankan sweetmeat) for long periods in their hearth lofts before embarking on their campaigns, in order to make a poultice of the cakes to treat wounds. It is assumed that the oil cakes served the dual functions of desiccant and antibacterial.
1600s	Poland	Wet bread was mixed with spider webs (containing spores) to treat wounds. The technique was mentioned by Henryk Sienkiewicz Henryk Sienkiewicz Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz was a Polish journalist and Nobel Prize-winning novelist. A Polish szlachcic of the Oszyk coat of arms, he was one of the most popular Polish writers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905 for his...  in his 1884 book With Fire and Sword With Fire and Sword With Fire and Sword is a historical novel by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, published in 1884. It is the first volume of a series known to Poles as the Trilogy, followed by The Deluge and Fire in the Steppe , also translated as Colonel Wolodyjowski... .
1640	England	The idea of using mould as a form of treatment was recorded by apothecaries, such as John Parkington, King's Herbarian, who advocated the use of mould in his 1640 book on pharmacology.
1870	England	Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson John Scott Burdon-Sanderson Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, Bt., F.R.S. was an English physiologist born near Newcastle upon Tyne. A member of a well known Northumbrian family, he received his medical education at the University of Edinburgh and at Paris... , who started out at St. Mary's Hospital 1852–1858 and as lecturer there 1854–1862 observed in 1870 that culture fluid covered with mould would produce no bacteria.
1871	England	Joseph Lister Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister OM, FRS, PC , known as Sir Joseph Lister, Bt., between 1883 and 1897, was a British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary... , an English surgeon and the father of modern antisepsis, was prompted by Burdon-Sandersons discovery to investigate and describe in 1871 that urine samples contaminated with mould did not allow the growth of bacteria. He also described the antibacterial action on human tissue on what he called Penicillium glaucum. A nurse at King's College Hospital King's College Hospital King's College Hospital is an acute care facility in the London Borough of Lambeth, referred to locally and by staff simply as "King's" or abbreviated internally to "KCH"...  whose wounds did not respond to any antiseptic, was then given another substance that cured her, and Lister's registrar informed her that it was called Penicillium.
1874	England	William Roberts William Roberts (physician) Sir William Roberts FRS was a physician in Manchester, England.Roberts was born on 18 March 1830 at Bodedern on the Isle of Anglesey the son David and Sarah Roberts, he was educated at Mill Hill School and at University College London. He graduated with a BA at London University in 1851 and became...  observed in 1874 that bacterial contamination is generally absent in cultures of the mould Penicillium glaucum Penicillium glaucum Penicillium glaucum is a mold which is used in the making of some types of blue cheese, including Bleu de Gex, Rochebaron and some varieties of Bleu d'Auvergne and Gorgonzola... .
1875	England	John Tyndall John Tyndall John Tyndall FRS was a prominent Irish 19th century physicist. His initial scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he studied thermal radiation, and produced a number of discoveries about processes in the atmosphere...  followed up on Burdon-Sanderson's work and demonstrated to the Royal Society the antibacterial action of the Penicillium fungus in 1875.
1875		Bacillus anthracis Bacillus anthracis Bacillus anthracis is the pathogen of the Anthrax acute disease. It is a Gram-positive, spore-forming, rod-shaped bacterium, with a width of 1-1.2µm and a length of 3-5µm. It can be grown in an ordinary nutrient medium under aerobic or anaerobic conditions.It is one of few bacteria known to... was shown to cause anthrax. This was the first demonstration that a specific bacterium caused a specific disease.
1877	France	Louis Pasteur Louis Pasteur Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...  and Jules Francois Joubert observed that cultures of the anthrax bacilli, when contaminated with moulds, became inhibited. Some references say that Pasteur identified the strain as Penicillium notatum.
1887	France	Garré in 1887 found similar results.
1895	Italy	Vicenzo Tiberio of Naples made extracts of Penicillium mould and injected them into animals with virulent bacteria, with inconclusive results.
1897	France	Ernest Duchesne Ernest Duchesne Ernest Duchesne was a French physician who noted that certain moulds kill bacteria. He made this discovery 32 years before Alexander Fleming discovered the antibiotic properties of penicillin, a substance derived from those moulds, but his research went unnoticed.-Life and work:Duchesne...  at École du Service de Santé Militaire in Lyons independently discovered healing properties of a Penicillium glaucum mould, even curing infected guinea pigs from typhoid. He published a dissertation in 1897 but this was ignored by the Institut Pasteur. However Duchesne was himself using a discovery made by Arab stable boys, who were using moulds to cure sores on horses. He did not claim that the mould contained any antibacterial substance, only that the mould somehow protected the animals. Duchesne cured typhoid, but the penicillin isolated by Fleming does not cure typhoid. Duchesne injected a mould with the fungus Penicillium glaucum. In contrast, Fleming isolated the substance penicillin from a mould containing Penicillium notatum. The term Penicillium glaucum was used as a catch-all phrase at the time for different fungi, but not for Penicillium notatum and the mould was unfortunately not preserved, which makes it impossible to be certain today which fungus might have been responsible for the cure, and consequently even less certain which substance was responsible.
1920	Belgium	In the 1920s, Andre Gratia and Sara Dath observed a fungal contamination in one of their Staphylococcus aureus cultures that was inhibiting the growth of the bacterium. They identified this as a species of Penicillium and presented their observations as a paper. There was little attention to this paper.
1923	Costa Rica	An Institut Pasteur Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who made some of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine at the time, including pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax...  scientist, Costa Rica Costa Rica Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east.... n Clodomiro Picado Twight Clodomiro Picado Twight Clodomiro Picado Twight , also known as "Clorito Picado", was a Nicaraguan-born scientist, citizen of Costa Rica, who was recognized for his research and discoveries. He was pioneer in the researching snakes and serpent venoms; his internationally recognized achievement was the development of...  recorded the antibiotic effect of Penicillium.
1928	England	Fleming Alexander Fleming Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy...  noticed a halo of inhibition of bacterial growth around a contaminant blue-green mould on a Staphylococcus Staphylococcus Staphylococcus is a genus of Gram-positive bacteria. Under the microscope they appear round , and form in grape-like clusters.... plate culture. He concluded that the mould was releasing a substance that was inhibiting bacterial growth. He grew a pure culture of the mould and discovered that it was Penicillium notatum. With help from a chemist he isolated what he later named "penicillin". During the next twelve years, he grew and distributed the original mould, unsuccessfully trying to get help from any chemist that had enough skill to make a stable form of it for mass production.
1930	England	Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Royal Infirmary in Sheffield Sheffield Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely... , attempted to treat sycosis Sycosis Sycosis is an inflammation of hair follicles, especially of the beard area, and generally classified as papulopustular and chronic.Types include:*Sycosis barbae*Lupoid sycosis*Tinea sycosis*Herpetic sycosis...  (eruptions in beard follicles) but was unsuccessful, probably because the drug did not penetrate deep enough. Moving on to opthalmia neonatorum, a gonococcal infection in babies, he achieved the first cure on 25 November 1930. He cured four patients (one adult, the others babies) of eye infections, although a fifth patient was not so lucky.
1938	England	In Oxford, Howard Walter Florey Howard Walter Florey Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey OM FRS was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Sir Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in the making of penicillin. Florey's discoveries are estimated to have saved...  organized his large and very skilled biochemical research team, notable among them Ernst Boris Chain Ernst Boris Chain Sir Ernst Boris Chain was a German-born British biochemist, and a 1945 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on penicillin.-Biography:...  and Norman Heatley Norman Heatley Norman George Heatley was a member of the team of Oxford University scientists who developed penicillin.He was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and as a boy was an enthusiastic sailor of a small boat on the River Deben; an experience which gave him a lifelong love of sailing... , to undertake innovative work to produce a stable penicillin.
1941–1943	USA	Peoria, Illinois Peoria, Illinois Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated... : Moyer, Coghill and Raper at the USDA Northern Regional Research Laboratory National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research The National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research is an United States Department of Agriculture laboratory center in Peoria, Illinois...  (NRRL) developed methods for industrialized penicillin production and isolated higher-yielding strains of the Penicillium fungus.
1941–1944	USA	Brooklyn, New York: Jasper Kane and other Pfizer Pfizer Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...  scientists developed the practical, deep-tank fermentation Industrial fermentation Industrial fermentation is the intentional use of fermentation by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi to make products useful to humans. Fermented products have applications as food as well as in general industry.- Food fermentation :...  method for production of large quantities of pharmaceutical-grade penicillin.
1952	Austria	Kundl Kundl Kundl is a market town in the Kufstein district of Austria and has 3955 inhabitants.-Geography:Kundl is situated 7.70 km West of Wörgl as well as 18.30 km Southwest of Kufstein at the Southern side of the Inn River and is made up of 4 parts, namely Kundl, Liesfeld , Saulueg and St... , Tyrol Tyrol (state) Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of... : Hans Margreiter and Ernst Brandl of Biochemie (now Sandoz Sandoz Founded in 2003, Sandoz presently is the generic drug subsidiary of Novartis, a multinational pharmaceutical company. The company develops, manufactures and markets generic drugs as well as pharmaceutical and biotechnological active ingredients.... ) developed the first acid-stable penicillin for oral administration, Penicillin V Phenoxymethylpenicillin Phenoxymethylpenicillin, commonly known as penicillin V, is a penicillin antibiotic that is orally active. It is less active than benzylpenicillin against Gram-negative bacteria. Phenoxymethylpenicillin is more acid-stable than benzylpenicillin, which allows it to be given orally... .

External links

• “History of Antiobiotics” from a course offered at Princeton University
  Princeton University
  Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
  
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(Most of the information in this article comes from this book)

• Debate in the House of Commons on the history and the future of the discovery