Discovery of Penicillin
In the month of August 1928, Fleming did something very important. He enjoyed a long vacation with his wife and young son.
On Monday, September 3, he returned to his laboratory and saw a pile of Petridishes he had left on his bench. The dishes contained colonies of Staphylococcus bacteria. While he was away, one of his assistants had left a window open and the dishes had become contaminated by different microbes.Annoyed, Fleming looked through the dishes and found something remarkable had taken place in one of them.
A fungus was growing and the bacterial colonies around it had been killed. Farther from the fungus, the bacteria looked normal. Excited by his observation, he showed the dish to an assistant, who remarked on how similar this seemed to Fleming’s famous discovery of lysozyme.
Hoping he had discovered a better natural antibiotic than lysozyme, Fleming now devoted himself to growing more of the fungus. He identified that it belonged to the Penicillium genus and that it produced a bacteria-killing liquid. On March 7, 1929 he formally named the antibiotic – it would be known as penicillin.
Fleming published his results, showing that penicillin killed a variety of bacteria which were then the scourge of humanity, including those responsible for scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria. Furthermore, penicillin was non-toxic and it did not attack white blood cells.
Unfortunately, the scientific world was largely underwhelmed, ignoring his discovery.
Fleming faced a number of problems:
• it was difficult to isolate penicillin from the fungus producing it
• he could not find a way of producing penicillin in high concentrations
• penicillin seemed to be slow acting
• clinical tests of penicillin as a surface antiseptic showed it was not especially effective
• Fleming’s boss, Almroth Wright, had a generalized dislike of chemists and refused to allow them in his laboratory. The presence of a skilled chemist would have been a huge benefit in terms of isolating, purifying, and concentrating penicillin.
Regardless of these issues, Fleming continued with some work on penicillin in the 1930s, but never made the breakthrough he needed to produce it in large, concentrated quantities. Others, however, did.