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A very important development in medicine in the 20th century was the discovery of antibiotics. Death from an infection could be prevented if people were treated with antibiotics quickly.

Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin

• In 1928, a scientist called Alexander Fleming was studying the wounds of soldiers and infections caused by the staphylococci bacteria in his laboratory in London.
• He left some dishes on the windowsill containing the bacteria and went on holiday. Above his laboratory, a scientist was working with penicillin mould.
• While Fleming was away, some penicillin mould landed on the dishes, possibly having floated in through an open window.
• On his return, Fleming inspected the dishes and noticed that the penicillin mould had killed the staphylococci bacteria underneath.
• After carrying out several further experiments with the penicillin mould, Fleming noticed that it could kill bacteria without harming other nearby cells.
• He experimented and successfully used penicillin to treat a friend’s eye infection.
• Penicillin did not work on deeper infections and it took a long time to create enough penicillin to use.
• In 1929, Fleming wrote about his findings in a medical journal but did not continue with his study.

Howard Florey and Ernst Chain’s development of penicillin

In 1938, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain read Fleming’s article on penicillin. They realised it could be effective and got £25 in funding from the British government (which would be worth approximately £1,300 today). However, with World War Two approaching, the government had other priorities and did not support the project further than this.

Instead, Florey and Chain secured money from America to enable them to carry out more research. They discovered that penicillin was able to cure infections in mice. However, in order to run tests on humans, they needed a way of making a lot of pure penicillin. They started work using bedpans to build a home penicillin factory in which to create pure penicillin.

By 1941, Florey and Chain had made enough pure penicillin to test it on a human. They used it on a policeman called Albert Alexander, who had cut himself and was dying from a bacterial infection called septicaemia. The treatment worked and Alexander’s infection began to clear up. Unfortunately, Florey and Chain ran out of pure penicillin after a week and Alexander died.

However, Florey and Chain had shown that penicillin could be successful in treating bacterial infections.

Mass production of penicillin

In 1941, America entered World War Two. The American government realised the potential importance of penicillin for treating wounded soldiers and funded its mass production. British companies followed. By D-Day in 1944, the Allies had produced 2.3 million doses with which to treat the wounded.