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Originally Posted by JustRalph
Ever heard of penicillin?
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What?
St. Mary's Hospital, London
In 1928, at St. Mary's Hospital,
London, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. This discovery led to the introduction of antibiotics that greatly reduced the number of deaths from infection.
Penicillin: Who Found This Functional Fungus
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The first name for penicillin was “mould juice.” Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered the antibiotic in 1928, when he came back from a vacation and found that a green mold called Pennicilium notatum had contaminated Petri dishes in his lab … and were killing some of the bacteria he’d been growing.
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In 1938, Oxford Pathologist Howard Florey discovered Fleming’s research and expanded on it, working with a biochemist named Ernst Boris Chain, who had fled Germany. British biochemist Norman Heatley further developed the work, vigorously growing and purifying penicillin.
After much research and experimentation — as well as a trip to the United States, where Florey and Heatley worked with American scientists — an injectable, mass-produced form of penicillin was ready by 1942. That was just in time to help soldiers wounded in World War II.
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