Penicillin Essay

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Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved in World War II by the accident created miracle medicine Penicillin. They used the drug to largely reduce the bacteria infecting the soldiers wounds during battle. Although it is still used to this day many people may not know exactly what penicillin is, who made it into medicine, and last but not least how the medicine was created.In 1928 a scientist by the name of Alexander Fleming left his laboratory a mess and left to embark on a one month vacation. As stated in an article by Jesse Lane “Not-So-Dumb-Luck” (P6,S2,S3,S4) “ When he came back, he noticed that every dish left out in the open was covered in mold. He examined each dish closely to see if any hadn’t been contaminated. Suddenly, Fleming’s …show more content…
He examined it closely and noticed that there was a ring around the bacteria that had no signs of contamination. This ring was the bases for the medicine that saved so many lives. But who turned this little ring into the miracle medicine.While Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin, he himself did not the bacteria into the medicine. That credit goes to Dr. Howard Florey, Norman Heatley and later on Andrew J. Moyer. In the text “ The History of Penicillin” by Mary Bellis, of About.com it states “It was not until 1939 that Dr Howard Florey, a future Nobel Laureate, and three colleagues at Oxford University began intensive research and were able to demonstrate penicillin’s ability to kill infectious bacteria”. While at war british scientists couldn’t keep up with Germany’s demands so they asked the U.S for help. This was when Mr. Florey and Mr. Heatley presented a small dose of the penicillin to the U.S. Shortly after with the help of Andrew J. Moyer they increased the effect of the penicillin by 10 times and started to mass produce the medicine. This is a great medicine but once again not many people know what it is.Penicillin is a widely used and very effective

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