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Biography

Fleming was born in a farm in Lochfield close to Darvel in the East Ayrshire. It attended the local school there then, during two years, the Kilmarnock Academy. After having worked in an office of navigation during four years, Fleming inherited a little money one uncle at age the 20 years. His/her older brother, Tom, were already doctor and it suggested the same career to him, also in 1901, was registered it with the Hôpital Sainte-Marie of London. It accepted its diploma with mention in 1906 and had the possibility of becoming surgeon, but it was that it belonged to the Riffle Club (he was active member of the Territorial Army since 1900). The captain of the club, wanting to retain Fleming in the team, suggested to him entering to the department of research of the Sainte-Marie hospital, where he became assistant-bacteriologist of Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer of the vaccine therapy and immunology. He obtained his M.B then his B.Sc with Gold medal in 1908 and became part-time lecturer at the Sainte-Marie hospital until in 1914. He served during the First World War as captain in the Body of the Army medical officers and was quoted with the day order. With many his colleagues, he worked in the hospitals of countryside on the Western face in France. In 1918 it returned to the Sainte-Marie Hospital, which was a center of teaching and in 1928 it was named there professor of biology.

Its work before the discovery of penicillin

After the war, Fleming made research on the agents antibactériens, because it had been pilot death of a great number of soldiers, victims of septicaemia. Unfortunately the disinfectants killed immunological defenses of the patient more quickly than they did not kill the bacteria which had invaded it. In an article of The Lancet published during the First World War, Fleming had explained why the disinfectants killed more soldiers than the diseases themselves. They worked correctly on the skin, but the deep wounds tended to shelter anaerobic bacteria and the disinfectants appeared to eliminate especially from the beneficial agents which would have protected the patients effectively. Sir Almroth Wright strongly supported the conclusions of Fleming. Despite everything, during the First World War, the majority of the army medical officers did not continue any less to use disinfectants, even whenever their use worsened the state of the patients.

In 1922, Fleming discovered the lysozyme, antibiotic manufactured by the body itself, and the fact that it had light properties antibactériennes.

Six years later, he discovered - makes redécouvrit of it after Ernest Duchesne - penicillin by accident, at the time of the observation of a Moisissure which killed the Bactérie S of one of its experiments, and especially he included/understood and made include/understand his medical interest.

A chance discovery

September 3rd, 1928, he inquired into the properties of the staphilococca. He was already well-known at that time because of his first discovered and he had the reputation to be a remarkable but negligent researcher; he generally forgot the cultures on which he worked and its laboratory was usually in full disorder. After summer holidays, he noticed that many of its boxes of culture had been contaminated by a mushroom and had thus put them in disinfecting. Having to show its work with a visitor it recovered some of the boxes which had not been completely soaked and at this point in time it noticed around a mushroom a zone where the bacteria had not developed. It isolated an extract from the mould, correctly identified it like pertaining to the family of Penicillium and called this agent penicillin. It was certainly not the first time that a bacterial culture was infected; the genius of Alexander Fleming is that it included/understood the importance of the phenomenon and explained it.

He successfully studied his effects on a great number of bacteria and noticed that it acted against of the bacteria like the staphilococca and all the pathogenic Gram-positive ones (scarlet fever, pneumonia, gonorrhea, meningitis, diphteria), but not against the typhoid fever or the fever paratyphoid, to which it sought a remedy for this moment.

On its discovery, Fleming off published in 1929 in the British Journal Experimental Pathology an article which drew the attention little. It continued its research, but noted that it was difficult to cultivate Penicillium and, even when one there arrived, it was even more difficult to extract penicillin from it. Its impression was that, because of this problem of production in great quantity and because its action seemed to him slow, penicillin would hardly have importance in the treatment of the infections. Fleming had been also convinced that penicillin would not remain long enough in the human body to kill out of the bacteria. A great number of clinical tests appeared not very conclusive, probably owing to the fact that it was used there as disinfectant. The fact that the pharmaceutical large companies had invested much in the production of sulphamide was an enormous brake with its research. In 1933 it succeeds in curing Keith Rogers completely; this remarkable clinical case showed now that it could be interesting for a chemist to continue in this way and to develop the stable penicillin shape. At the same time as he devoted himself to other research, he continued until 1940 trying to interest a chemist who would have enough address to succeed. In 1940, gives it will change on the pharmaceutical level: it will be necessary to give in state the casualties as quickly as possible.

Purification in a stable form and production on industrial scale

Howard Florey off directed a large research team in Sir William Dunn School Pathology of the University of Oxford. The team had worked before on the Lysozyme of Fleming and Florey had read the article of Fleming which described the antibactériens effects of penicillin. In 1938 he wanted to try to purify three promising substances, by hoping that at least one of them could prove to be useful. One of these three substances was penicillin.

Ernst Chain found the way of insulating and to concentrate penicillin and it theorized the structure correctly of it. Little time after the team had published her first results in 1940, Fleming was presented and required to see where it was. When Chain had required of him which it was and which Fleming had said to him its name, Chain exclaimed “I believed that you had died! ”.

Norman Heatley had the idea to transfer in water the active component from penicillin to change its acidity. It could then produce drug enough to start to make tests on the animals.

Sir Henry Harris said in 1998: “Without Fleming, not of Chain nor of Florey; without Chain, not of Florey; without Florey, not of Heatley; without Heatley, not of penicillin”. More and more of people implied themselves in the team of Oxford and, at a given time, it is the whole Dunn School which was devoted to the production of penicillin.

After the team into 1940 had developed a method to finally obtain penicillin in a form stable and usable, several clinical trials were tried, with as well success as the team sought how to produce it in great quantity to massively distribute it in 1945.

Fleming was modest as for its participation in this discovery and, by evoking its glory, spoke about the “Myth of Fleming”; it held its praises with Florey and Chain which had known to transform this lucky find of laboratory into a drug usable. Fleming had been the first to isolate all the same the active substance, and its name had given him: penicillin. It is him also which during twelve years had preserved, cultivated and distributed the original mould, and until 1940 it had continued to try to convince any rather skilful chemist to prepare it in a form stable, likely to be produced in mass. Many attempts failed in the entourage of Fleming when one wanted to stabilize the substance before Florey, in 1938, had organized in Oxford a many and tested biochemical research team. It is only whereas one could begin this immense and revolutionary work.

Antibiotics

The chance discovery of Fleming in September 1928 making it possible to isolate penicillin marked the beginning of modern antibiotics. Very early also, Fleming realized that the bacteria developed a resistance to antibiotics each time one used not enough penicillin or for one too short period. Almroth Wright had predicted this resistance to antibiotics even before it had been observed in experiments.

In much of its speeches throughout the world, Fleming insisted on a correct use of penicillin. It recommended not to use it without reason and apart from a correct diagnosis, never to use too much little of it, or for one too short period, because it is precisely in such circumstances that the resistance of the bacteria develops with antibiotics.

Received rewards

Fleming, Florey and Chain received together the Nobel Prize of Medicine in 1945. According to the rules of the Nobel committee a maximum of three people can share this price.
Fleming was anobli in 1944.
Florey received an honor even larger with a peerage and a title of baron for the extraordinary work which it had completed by putting penicillin at the range of the public, which made it possible to save million lives during the Second world war.
Fleming was classified 43e on the list of Michael H. Hart who gives us the people who in the history had the most influence.
the discovery of penicillin was regarded as most important of the millenium to the approach of the year 2000 by at least 3 large Swedish magazines. It is impossible to know how much lives this discovery saved, but some of these magazines gave a figure of almost 200 million.
the biography written by Kevin Brown gives us a list of hundreds of price and honors granted to Fleming.

Other information

In 1915, Fleming married Sarah Marion McElroy, originating in Killala (Ireland). Their son became general doctor.

Sarah having died in 1949, Fleming remaria in 1953 with Amalia Koutsouri-Voureka, a Greek colleague of the hospital Sainte-Marie.

Fleming was for a long time member of the Chelsea Arts Club , a private club which brought together the artists of all kinds, founded in 1891 on the initiative of the painter James McNeil Whistler. Fleming was allowed after having made “paintings of germs” for which it used spores of very pigmented bacteria. These bacteria were invisible while it painted, but took once cultivated brilliant colors.

Serratia marcescens - red

Chromobacterium violaceum - crimson

Micrococcus luteus - yellow

Micrococcus varians - white

Micrococcus roseus - pink

Bacillus sp. - crimson

Fleming was an irreducible smoker and lit his new cigarette on the cigarette end of old.

Caption

Everyone knows the history of the father of Winston Churchill which would have paid the education of Fleming after the father of this one had saved death the Winston young person; but there is nothing truth. According to the biography due to Kevin Brown, l' Man of penicillin: Alexander Fleming and the Revolution of the antibiotiques, Alexander Fleming said itself that it was “about a quite beautiful fable”. It did not save either Winston Churchill during the Second world war. Churchill owes its cure with Lord Moran, who used the sulphonamides, since it did not have any experience of penicillin, at the time where Churchill is falls ill with Carthage in Tunisia in 1943. The Daily Telegraph and the Morning Post of December 21st, 1943 wrote that it had been saved by penicillin. It is probable that, as the sulphonamides were a German discovery and than the United Kingdom was in war against Germany, the patriotic pride which miraculous penicillin caused has something to see in this error.

Died
Fleming died into 1955 of one heart attack at the 73 years age. It was buried like a national hero in the crypt of the Saint-Paul Cathedral in London. Its discovery of penicillin had revolutionized the world of the drugs by opening the era of antibiotics; the discovery of penicillin saved and saves always million people.

Sources

See too

Discovered penicillin

Simple: Alexander Fleming
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