Penicillin: miracle drug

Following some oral surgery this week, I was prescribed penicillin to fight the likelihood of bacterial infection. I can't remember the last time I was given that medicine - seems like there are many other alternative antibiotics these days. But it's been interesting to ponder the history of this medicine, and how many lives it has saved.

Penicillin was first discovered by a Scottish scientist named Alexander Fleming in 1928. There were occasional uses in treating disease in the years that followed, but scientists were unable to produce it in large enough quantities to make it practical, and it didn't attract a lot of attention. Purified penicillin and the means to mass-produce it didn't happen until the 1940s. Historically, more injured men died in wartime from post-injury infections than from the injury itself. In the later years of World War II, penicillin became a critical medicine in treating wounded soldiers and saved countless lives. Fleming finally received a Nobel Prize in 1945.

Following the war, penicillin became so widely prescribed that bacteria started to develop resistance to the drug. Alternate, often synthetic, forms of antibiotic drugs were developed to compensate. But penicillin remained the standard of the industry.

Sometimes good ideas aren't recognized initially for the power they possess. Sometimes we're aware of the power of something but there are obstacles to using or implementing it. Sometimes we waste time chasing the wrong idea when a better one is waiting for attention. Yet another thing to reflect on from time to time!

I #GiveThanks for the blessing of medical science. Discoveries like antibacterial drugs, and the science of immunization against viral infections, have miraculously extended life and relieved suffering in our modern world.

Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin in 1928.

A wartime poster encouraging workers constructing a lab where penicillin would be produced.