Penicillin is an antibiotic which is made from the mould from Penicillium. Penicillium is a fungi which is found naturally in soils, wood, plants etc. (Frisvad & Samson, 2004). During the early 20th century a scientist by the name of Alexander Fleming discovered the effects of the Penicillin. (Dougherty & Pucci, 2011) Fleming discovered this effect by luck, he went away for a holiday and when you came back he saw some petri dishes he had left which contained Staphylococcus. Fleming saw that Penicillin was resistant to the Staphylococcus and stopping the Bacteria from growing new cell walls as they were trying to divide thus causing the Staphylococcus cells to burst. (Dougherty & Pucci, 2011) Fleming did not try to make something of this discovery. …show more content…
This group of scientist tested the mould on more bacteria than Fleming did. This is because they were able to extract the active samples of Penicillin. This lead them to want to test the effects of it on like samples, rats. They injected the Penicillin into the rats as penicillin after they had Staphylococcus. (Pain, Pus and Poison: Pus, 2013) Injection was the easiest method of administering the drug, due to the active samples being in the form of a powder and making the powder into a tablet and making the rats eat it would have been difficult do to. Using Penicillin on live animals would show the effects it would really have. Eights were injected with Staphylococcus and only four out of the eight were administered Penicillin. The rats with only Staphylococcus had died and the other rats were still alive. This was the first time Penicillin was used in treating something in a live animal (Howie, 1986). This caused the use of Penicillin on larger animals, …show more content…
He discovered Penicillin when the mould Penicilium was found in a petri dish which had Staphylococcus and saw it was resistant to the bacteria and stopped the cell walls from growing when they would start to split thus causing the cell to explode. But Alexander Fleming was not able extract an active sample, Howard Walter Florey and a group of other scientist were able to and were also able to test it on live animals with positive effects and wanting to test it on a human with an infection. Due to the success of the treatment of an infection, they wanted to mass produce the drug due to World War 2 happening and a lot of infections happening as well. The mass production of penicillin helped changed not just how the wounded from war but normal people who have had small or large cuts which have become infected. Without penicillin more people would have die because of simple
PHAR 100 Assignment 3 1. Antibiotics are a form of medicine that seek out and destroy the bacteria that make us feel sick. Antibiotics work great against bacteria, however they don’t work against viruses. Penicillin was the first antibiotic to be discovered by Alexander Fleming, and it was first used to treat infections. Essentially, these powerful medicines fight bacterial infections, and have the potential to save lives.
Another account of this was the sulfonamide experimentation. In this test, bacteria such as streptococcus, gas gangrene, and tetanus was inserted into abrasions intentionally inflected to the subject. To generate a related condition to the ones faced by the German Armed Forces, circulation was stopped from both sides of the injury. "Doctors" forced wood shavings into the abrasions to exacerbate the infection. These illnesses were then treated with sulfonamide and additional drugs.
It saved many soldiers from infection and was a major part in cleaning and treating wounds. Penicillin was a reliable antibiotic then, and is still reliable medicine now. It is still popular and used to deal with infections and diseases today. Because of penicillin’s huge positive impact on the medical world from World War II uptil now, posters and encouragement was developed to stimulate more production like the poster to the right. Not only this, but it gave US some economic power because they were the only country who had it.
Fleming’s penicillin alone has saved an estimated 200 million lives (New World Encyclopedia Contributors 2013). Not only would antibiotics combat 50 percent of common illness threatening seamen, but also would prevent any potential bacterial infections brought on by environmental ailments like carbon dioxide poisoning, scurvy, and malnutrition. Though antibiotics are not a safeguard against any contractible sickness, they are an explicit defense against bacterial infections, which were the most common form of infection among
It also helped the medics out on the field too. “Military surgeons were amazed by how the drug reduced pain, increased the chance of survival and made it easier for nurses and doctors to care for soldiers on the battlefield.” (Little, 2021). Penicillin helped soldiers in many aspects. Not only were scientists able to create the flu vaccine and penicillin
Moreover, Penicillin, a group of antibiotics, was discovered during this time, specifically in the 1928s by Alexander Fleming (ACS, 2023). Although the first dose of penicillin was used in 1941 by Albert Alexander, it was still a life-changing discovery as it changed the lives of many - even after the period of 1918s1939s (Wood, 2010). The discovery of penicillin allowed a lot of life-threatening diseases to be treated, such as bronchitis, tonsillitis, and pneumonia. Penicillin is known to save millions of lives. Indeed, in just World War Two, the death rate because of bacterial pneumonia would go from 18% to 1%, because of the invention of penicillin.
According to Joseph Castro a contributor from the website Live Science,” Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a strain of staph bacteria that is resistant to the antibiotics normally used to treat such infections” (Castro 2013). Castro explains how in 1940 doctors started treating MRSA with penicillin. After penicillin doctors started using methicillin because penicillin helped the microbes evolve with resistance to penicillin. Then after penicillin methicillin became the new treatment for
However, the physicians did not reveal the actual purpose of the study. Consequently, penicillin was the most effective medication, but the doctors decided to withhold treatment (Bozeman, Hirsch, & Slade ,
Antibiotics and similar drugs, together called antimicrobial agents, have been used for the last 70 years to treat patients who have infectious diseases. Since the 1940s, these drugs have greatly reduced illness and death from infectious diseases. However, these drugs have been used so widely and for so long that the infectious organisms the antibiotics are designed to kill have adapted to them, making the drugs less
Experimenting through trial and error seemed to influence the advances in medicine during this plague
For instance, Rifampin, an antibiotic used to treat Tuberculosis, Neisseria meningitidis- also known as Meningitis- or infections in the nose and throat. Another treatment is a vaccine known as Bacillus Calmette- Guerin to prevent T.b. or to heal bladder tumors or bladder cancers. “It wasn’t that all these infectious diseases had simultaneously changed to be less deadly (Humphries/ Bystrianyk 15). It was the environment in which they had existed had shifted from one where they were very often deadly to one where they were they were not a significant threat (Humphries/ Bystrianyk 15).
They made treatments for soldiers who has had severe wounds. Those treatments fell under a new class of drugs called Sulfanilamide1, which provided effective treatments for bacterial diseases like pneumonia and meningitis. One of the safest and active antibacterial available, Penicillin, was a huge medical advancement that was invented during the war. Another huge
Amid Alexander Fleming 's Nobel discourse he said, "After I finished my research, biochemist Dorothy Crawfort Hodkin used x-rays to determine the atomic structure and molecular shape of penicillin. " (Fleming,2)Dr. C.G. Paine, dermatologist Albert Nutt were two famous doctors who used Hodkin’s research to develop several startling cures with the new substance as early as 1930 (Krebs,23) All of the fresh out of the box new research and the newfound properties of penicillin brought these new anti biotics which cured maladies that were very common, which balanced out various sorts of microbes. The life expectancy of the urban population increased by 3 years.
This was the purpose of helping the Russians with their illness. Thereafter, Pasteur conducted numerous observations with his colleagues while looking at the same theory . An example would be when finding a vaccination for the anthrax . Pasteur’s scientific
He is very popular in the history of medicine and many would go on and on about his great contributions. But there we’re others before Pasteur that studied medicine and worked hard to discover the cure for the most popular diseases that we’re killing many back then. One of those people is Edward Jenner. Jenner is also very popular in the history of medicine and Pasteur build on his work to create and tests his experiments. Back then, smallpox was killing many people especially children.