Development of Penicillin
From the end of the 18th century, as pathogenic bacteria were discovered one after another, the development of real antibiotics was penicillin. Anyone with even a little bit of knowledge of history would answer that the developer of penicillin was Alexander Fleming. Well, this is not wrong, but the truth is a little different.
One day, Fleming noticed blue mold growing on a container in which he was cultivating bacteria. Looking closely, he found that there was no bacteria growing around the blue mold. It seemed that some substance released by the blue mold was preventing the bacteria from multiplying. Fleming published this in a paper, but did not investigate the matter in detail. The Australian Howard Florey studied this phenomenon in detail. He was a researcher at the Faculty of Medicine at Oxford University, and was not only an excellent researcher, but also an outstanding educator and mentor. Young researchers came to his laboratory because they were attracted to his personality. Blue mold was needed for research. Researchers searched here and there for good blue mold. They would find moldy fruit in a fruit market that had been thrown away in the trash, and they would happily take it. People must have thought that researchers were quite strange.
During the Second World War, when Nazi Germany was about to invade England, the researchers prepared their leather coats by smearing the insides with blue mold, with the intention of wearing them to flee north if the situation worsened.
Eventually, the technical problems in penicillin production were solved, and Florey and his team were looking to mass-produce the drug, so they asked the British government for funding, but the British did not understand the importance of penicillin and refused to cooperate. With no other choice, Lawry and his team asked the US government for cooperation. The US quickly realized the importance of penicillin and adopted it as a national project.
The production of penicillin was moved to America. Luckily, America had an abundance of something that blue mold loves: maple syrup. When maple syrup was used, blue mold grew like crazy. To grow the blue mold, mold had to be added to the syrup and stirred. One company took on the job. It was a juice store that sold fountain juice. Its name was Pfizer. Yes, it was Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, which is now a major pharmaceutical company.
Thus the US government prepared for the Normandy landings, with 200,000-300,000 soldiers each carrying their own supply of penicillin. Penicillin was more expensive per gram than gold, but it dramatically reduced the number of soldiers dying from blood poisoning after wounds.
After the war, penicillin was used to treat former British Prime Minister Churchill's pneumonia, and he recovered dramatically. This astonished the world, and the name of penicillin spread around the world. Florey was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945, but he never took pride in his own achievement, instead supporting Fleming in receiving the Nobel Prize at the same time, saying that it was Fleming who first created the opportunity for penicillin and that he would not have received the prize without him. Florey praised Fleming at every opportunity, so the idea that it was Fleming who created penicillin became widely known. From these examples, we can see that Florey was a humble person.
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