by Nicole Gadda
Many of us have taken antibiotics for common bacterial infections like strep throat or pneumonia, but have you ever wondered how these infections were treated prior to the discovery of antibiotics? And what even is an antibiotic, anyway? Antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria or fungi that can kill other microbial species. Unfortunately, before antibiotic use became widespread, there were no effective treatments for infections. Untreated strep throat could turn into rheumatic fever, and simple cuts and wounds that became infected could lead to blood infections. Doctors could do little for full-body infections like this, and many people died from infections that we now consider easily treatable.
Cue the man who changed medicine forever: Alexander Fleming, who discovered the world’s first known antibiotic.
Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician-scientist born in 1881. He served as a captain in World War I, where he saw many of his fellow soldiers die on the battlefield. However, the majority of soldiers’ deaths were not a result of wounds inflicted directly during battle, but from the bacterial infections that occurred afterward. At this time, antibiotics didn’t exist, and the most common treatment for infection was the application of strong antiseptics on open wounds. Antiseptics are chemical agents that are used to reduce the risk of infection, but are often too harsh for cleaning deep wounds. You may be familiar with antiseptics like hydrogen peroxide–many home medical cabinets use it to treat superficial wounds like paper cuts.
In August 1928, Alexander Fleming did one of the most crucial things for the survival of mankind.
He went on vacation with his wife and son.
Now, let me explain. Fleming was an “organized mess” type of scientist. He always wanted to have a final look at his experiments before throwing them away, even if it meant leaving experimental results out for weeks at a time. Prior to leaving on vacation, Fleming was working with a bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus, which causes skin infections. He grew this species of bacteria on multiple glass Petri dishes, and left them out on his lab bench. With the experiment finished, but unwilling to part with the results, Fleming left the Petri dishes with S. aureus out on his bench before leaving for his long vacation. Weeks later, upon returning back to work, Fleming discovered many of his samples were contaminated with other microbes. However, one sample in particular looked a little unusual. Although the sample was initially covered in S. aureus bacteria, there was now a clearing around one contaminant where no bacteria grew. Fleming isolated this contaminant and identified it as Penicillium notatum. Fleming discovered that this fungus secretes so-called “mould juice” that inhibits bacterial growth. He later named this compound “penicillin,” and it became the first known antibiotic to mankind.
At first, Fleming and his team were more interested in using penicillin for research purposes than as medicine. They tried to purify penicillin by removing contaminants, but were unsuccessful. It wasn’t until 1939 when Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and their colleagues at Oxford University were able to purify penicillin and test it as a life-saving antibiotic. It became widely available during World War II, saving countless lives of soldiers who would have died from wound infections. In 1945, Fleming, Florey, and Chain received the Nobel Prize for the discovery and commercial use of penicillin as an antibiotic. The three became world-famous scientists, and Fleming himself acted as a world ambassador for medicine and science. However, Fleming never forgot his humble roots, saying, “I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident.”
Moral of the story? Don’t clean up after yourself, or you may miss out on discovering the next world-revolutionizing, Nobel Prize-worthy medicine.
