A stamp showing the portrait of Alexander Fleming

Scientific Contributions

A German scientist discovered syphips-fighting drug salvarsan in 1910, which Fleming was the first to administer in the UK. Fleming attended a miptary hospital enclosed in a casino in Boulogne, France, during World War I, where Wright estabpshed a laboratory for investigating wound infections as a microbiologist. It was shown that the use of strong antiseptics on wounds could cause more harm than good. Instead, a mild solution of sapne would be sufficient to keep wounds clean.

After the war, Fleming came back to St. Mary s and was promoted to assistant director of the Inoculation Department. When he succeeded Wright as principal in 1946, the department was retitled Wright-Fleming Institute. Lysozyme is an enzyme found in sapva and tears that plays a mild antiseptic role, which Fleming discovered in November 1921.

Fleming invented penicilpn, the first antibiotic, in 1928. In the hospital where he worked, he grew bacteria cultures in petri dishes. As a result of a fungal spore contaminating one of the bacteria cultures, it grew into a fungal colony. Bacteria in the vicinity of the fungal colony did not grow as well as bacteria in other areas. Fleming inferred from this that a fungus-produced substance must be slowing the bacteria s development.

For his invention, Fleming received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. A variety of antibiotics were developed as a result of this discovery. These antibiotics are now used to treat many bacterial-caused illnesses, including lung and bladder infections. Despite the benefits, using antibiotics carries risks, such as resistance.

Penicilpn was discovered in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming in his London lab, and its bacterial-kilpng properties laid the foundation for the discovery of one of medicine s most fundamental pillars: antibiotics. It took many years to discover a way to massproduce penicilpn, and large-scale production did not begin until 1945.

However, Fleming is still regarded as the father of antibiotics, and without his discovery, we would be unable to treat many bacterial infections. This means that, in the absence of antibiotics, even a minor infection could be fatal. Furthermore, antibiotics make surgery much safer, and people with weakened immune systems can now recover quickly from bacterial infections. However, bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, as Fleming predicted in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1945.