In England, Alexander Fleming had, like Avery, concentrated on developing a medium in which the bacillus could flourish. In 1928 he left a petri dish uncovered with staphylococcus growing in it. Two days later he discovered a mold that inhibited the growth. He extracted from the mold the substance that stopped the bacteria and called it “penicillin.” Fleming found that penicillin killed staphylococcus, hemolytic streptococcus, pneumococcus, gonococcus, diphtheria bacilli, and other bacteria, but it did no harm to the influenza bacillus. He did not try to develop penicillin into a medicine. To him the influenza bacillus was important enough that he used penicillin to help grow it by killing any contaminating bacteria in the culture. He used penicillin as he said, “for the isolation of influenza bacilli.” This “special selective cultural technique” allowed him to find ”B. influenzae in the gums, nasal space, and tonsils from practically every individual” he investigated.
(Fleming never did see penicillin as an antibiotic. A decade later Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, did, and they developed Fleming’s observation into the first wonder drug. It was so scarce and so powerful that in World War II, U.S. Army teams recovered it from the urine of men who had been treated with it, so it could be reused. In 1945, Florey, Chain, and Fleming shared the Nobel Prize.)
Source:
Barry, John M. “Endgame.” The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Penguin Books, 2009. 417-18. Print.
Further Reading:
Sir Alexander Fleming FRS FRSE FRCS
Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey, OM, FRS, FRCP
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