How Did Alexander Fleming Use Penicillin

Sir Alexander Fleming was born August 6th 1881 in Lochfield, Scotland. He was born to Hugh Fleming and his second wife Grace Morton. At the tender age of seven Alexander’s father died and it fell upon his mother and oldest brother, Thomas, to keep both the family and the farm afloat. From here on Fleming showed a natural intelligence, uncommon for both his age and upbringing. At the age of 13 Fleming moved to London following his brothers John and Thomas, who were physicians.There he attended Regent Street Polytechnic for two years (Scientists: Their Lives and Works par 2). In 1901, Fleming inherited 250 pounds, which allowed him to pursue medicine at St. Mary’s Medical School. He was quite a competitive student, with quite high test scores

Therefore penicillin was just an afterthought, until Howard Florey and Ernst Chain turned it into the lifesaving drug is today, twelve years after the initial discovery. In 1939 Florey and Chain began working with penicillin and trying to make larger quantities by fermenting the mold in everything from baths to food tins( Aldridge par 4). The pair tested the effects of penicillin on a police officer with an infected cut on his face, he made a remarkable recovery. But nonetheless he died once the supplies of penicillin were depleted. This test caught the attention of pharmaceutical companies from either side of the pond took interest on this “wonder drug”. There was a massive scale up in the manufacturing of penicillin and by the end of World War II penicillin was generally available to the public. The identification and mass production of penicillin made a huge impact on the death toll via infection among humans; working well against diseases such as Chlamydia which, at the time, led to infertility and possibly amputation. Sadly penicillin had had no effect against TB or tuberculosis which killed 25% of adults in the 17th-18th centuries(Aldridge par 7). Later in 1944 Fleming was knighted and the following year Fleming, Chain and Florey shared the Nobel Prize in medicine.As a scientist Sir Alexander