Medicines happy accident
- The Random Leftist
- May 9, 2020
- 2 min read
The early twentieth century is remembered as a time where humanity faced its most significant lows. With the occurrence of two wars, unlike any, the world had ever seen. However, in between those to colossal conflicts were times of…. Not exactly prosperity or at least partial prosperity but also hardship. The roaring twenties and the Great Depression. One thing that was common throughout both the highest and lowest levels of society was that mistakes were commonplace, and though some of these mistakes had disastrous ramifications such as the Great Depression, other mistakes surprisingly ended up saving a great many lives. One of these happy accidents was the discovery of the world’s first antibiotic.
Our tale begins in 1928 just a year before the global economy went down the drain. One day Scottish scientists and First World War veteran Alexander Fleming. Who studied bacteria. He was returning to his lab from a two-week-long vacation. However before he left there were samples of staphylococcus bacteria. Before he was going to throw away the samples he’d exam it and find a fungus had grown around it. He’d exam the substance and see that the bacteria had died off. He would be fascinated by this process and would attempt to replicate it by growing the mound himself and eventually doing so.
Much later, Fleming would remark, “One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly did not plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. However, I guess that is exactly what I did.”
Years later, the study of the substance would go to Oxford. With scientist Howard Flory and Ernst Chain taking the reins from Fleming. With them being the individuals who made Penicillin into medicine, which they fed to mice. However, it would take a little over a decade for it to be taken by humans.
In 1942 one year after the United States had entered the Second World War, the first patient was treated for streptococcal septicemia with Penicillin. In the following years, Penicillin would be mass-produced and given to soldiers. Some believe that thanks to the mass production of Penicillin, a massive pandemic like the Spanish Flu, which followed the first world war was avoided.
For the following decades, Penicillin would be used to treat a plethora of other diseases, and some estimates say that the number of lives it saves. However, during these decades, certain Bacteria would begin to grow an immunity towards Penicillin. Though it may not be as versatile as it, Penicillin is still used to this day to treat diseases. So though it might not end our current virus, it is still saving lives to this very day.
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