Alexander Fleming To Test The Effects Of Penicillin

Penicillin is an antibiotic which is made from the mould from Penicillium. Penicillium is a fungi which is found naturally in soils, wood, plants etc. (Frisvad & Samson, 2004). During the early 20th century a scientist by the name of Alexander Fleming discovered the effects of the Penicillin. (Dougherty & Pucci, 2011) Fleming discovered this effect by luck, he went away for a holiday and when you came back he saw some petri dishes he had left which contained Staphylococcus. Fleming saw that Penicillin was resistant to the Staphylococcus and stopping the Bacteria from growing new cell walls as they were trying to divide thus causing the Staphylococcus cells to burst. (Dougherty & Pucci, 2011) Fleming did not try to make something of this discovery.

This group of scientist tested the mould on more bacteria than Fleming did. This is because they were able to extract the active samples of Penicillin. This lead them to want to test the effects of it on like samples, rats. They injected the Penicillin into the rats as penicillin after they had Staphylococcus. (Pain, Pus and Poison: Pus, 2013) Injection was the easiest method of administering the drug, due to the active samples being in the form of a powder and making the powder into a tablet and making the rats eat it would have been difficult do to. Using Penicillin on live animals would show the effects it would really have. Eights were injected with Staphylococcus and only four out of the eight were administered Penicillin. The rats with only Staphylococcus had died and the other rats were still alive. This was the first time Penicillin was used in treating something in a live animal (Howie, 1986). This caused the use of Penicillin on larger animals,

He discovered Penicillin when the mould Penicilium was found in a petri dish which had Staphylococcus and saw it was resistant to the bacteria and stopped the cell walls from growing when they would start to split thus causing the cell to explode. But Alexander Fleming was not able extract an active sample, Howard Walter Florey and a group of other scientist were able to and were also able to test it on live animals with positive effects and wanting to test it on a human with an infection. Due to the success of the treatment of an infection, they wanted to mass produce the drug due to World War 2 happening and a lot of infections happening as well. The mass production of penicillin helped changed not just how the wounded from war but normal people who have had small or large cuts which have become infected. Without penicillin more people would have die because of simple