Alexander Fleming and his great and his great discovery
When World War I broke out in Europe, Alexander Fleming was working in a hospital in London. He went to France with the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat the wounded. Many of the soldiers' wounds became infected. It frustrated Fleming that none of the treatments he tried would clear up the infections. He made up his mind to find a cure.
After the war Fleming went back to London and continued his research. One day he was about to throw out a petri dish, when something caught his eye. It was a dish that contained nasal mucus. The mucus seemed to be holding off the bacteria.
During the next few months, Fleming tried to repeat this experiment. He found that mucus did keep bacteria from growing, but it only seemed to work with harmless bacteria.
Fleming began to wonder if other body fluids might work better. He set to work experimenting with human saliva and tears. The saliva and tears worked much like the mucus had. But, again, they only affected good bacteria. Fleming's work was not going as well as he wanted. But he didn't give up. In 1928, he finally found what he had been searching for. Cleaning up one day, Fleming saw that mold had grown in a petri dish. It happened often. But this time the mold seemed to be killing the harmful bacteria on the plate. He took the mold, grew more of it and made what he called mold-juice.
Someone in the lab came down with a bad eye infection. Nothing seemed to cure it. Fleming talked his coworker into trying his mold-juice. As soon as he did, the infection went away.
Next, Fleming had to find out exactly what kind of mold he was dealing with. He examined the mold under a microscope and found it belonged to a family of molds called penicillium. He then renamed his mold-juice penicillin.
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