The original organism for producing penicillin, Penicillium notatum, was isolated by Alexander Fleming , professor of bacteriology at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London, as a chance contaminant while culturing other organisms.
More specifically, penicillin is the liquid which is secreted from Penicillium notatum, which is the mold.
In 1906 the young physician Alexander Fleming became a research assistant at St Mary's Hospital in London.
Fleming went to France during the First World War to treat wounded soldiers and could see for himself that there was no effective way of treating many infections. Back at St Mary's after the war, Fleming was determined to find a better way of killing germs.
In 1928 he was studying staphylococci bacteria (that can, among other things, infect wounds). Fleming was culturing Staphylococcus aureus on Petri dish with a thin agar layer. His culture plate was contaminated with mould. The amazing part of his work was that he found no microbial growth with radius of 3-5 cm of the mould.
Fleming noticed that in the vicinity of the contaminant the bacteria were apparently ungoing lysis. Fleming’s ingenuity was to realize that his observation was meaningful and not a ‘failed’ experiment.
He grew more of the mold, naming it penicillin from its Latin name Penicillium. Fleming discovered the mold was effective against bacteria that caused diseases such as anthrax, meningitis and diphtheria.
He published his discoveries but did not have the resources to experiment more widely with penicillin.
Some of the diseases/illnesses that penicillin treats includes: pneumonia, meningitis, erysipelas, scarlet fever, diphtheria, blood poisoning, syphilis, gangrene, strep throat and gonorrhea.
In the 1930s, Flemings trials occasionally showed more promise and he continued, until 1940, to try and interest a chemist skilled enough to further refine usable penicillin.
Penicillin works to treat illnesses/diseases by killing bacteria and arresting its growth. It only kills the bacteria that is growing and reproducing, not those which are stationery.
The discovery of Penicillin
