Discovered penicillin
Sir Alexander Fleming, was the first to suggest that the mould Penicillium notatum synthesized a substance antibactérienne, and it was the first to isolate this substance which it called Pénicilline. It was not the first to however use its properties, and it was not that which allowed the development of the therapeutic application of penicillin.
History
The discovery of Alexander Fleming
September 3rd, 1928, the doctor Alexander Fleming then 47 years old, returns from holidays and finds its laboratory of the Saint-Mary' S Hospital in London. It then finds the boxes of $petri where it made push cultures of Staphylocoque S with an aim of studying the effect antibactérien Lysozyme S, a variety of enzyme being in the tears and saliva. It with the bad surprise to see its boxes invaded by cotonneuses colonies of mould of a greenish white. They were contaminated by the stocks of a microscopic mushroom, Penicillium notatum , which its neighbor of straw mattress uses, a young Irish mycologist, Charles J. Latouche, who works on this mushroom species, which involves allergies among asthmatic patients.
Whereas it must disinfect these contaminated boxes, Fleming realizes that around the colonies of mould, there exists a circular zone in which the staphilococcus did not push. It puts forth the assumption that a substance secreted by mushroom of it is responsible and gives him the name of Pénicilline.
The following year, in 1929, it publishes in the " British Newspaper off Experimental Pathology " the first report of the effect of this substance, thinking that its action is of the same type as that of the lysozyme. " During work with various staphilococca a certain number of cultures were put of dimensioned and were examined from time to time. During the examination, these cultures were exposed to the air and were sown by various micro-organisms. It was noticed that around a large mushroom colony polluting the colonies of staphilococca had become transparent and without any doubt in the process of dissolution. " .
" The penicillin used in massive amounts is neither toxic nor irritating… it can constitute, by applications or in injections, an effective disinfectant against the microbes " .
Craddock and Ridley, his/her collaborators, try to isolate and purify Penicillin but in vain. Fleming is interested little in a therapeutic application of its discovery and uses especially the extracts of this Penicillium to manufacture selective mediums. It proves that penicillin is not harmful for the man and suggests using it like disinfecting disinfectant i.e. one applied to the skin, outside the body.
Some therapeutic clinical trials are carried out all the same but without much success. The discovery of Flemimg interests little world, it will seek other producing antibiotic micro-organisms but it will not publish its work.
It is necessary to await ten years before Penicillin does not reconsider the front of the scene. It is in 1939, that Howard Walter Florey, British pathologist, and Ernst Boris Chain, biochemist and pathologist of German origin, succeeded in isolating the active agent from penicillin.
In May 1943, Florey and its team receive enough penicillin for tests on British casualties. They go to Algiers where are the allied troops in order to carry out vaccinations.
In 1945, these three men (Fleming, Florey and Chain) divide the Nobel Prize of medicine for their work penicillin and its therapeutic application.