FREE ESSAY ON SIR ALEXANDER FLEMING

SIR ALEXANDER FLEMING

Sir Alexander Fleming was born in Lochfield, Scotland on August 6th, 1881. He attended St.
Mary's Medical School in London. It was in St. Mary's, where Sir Alexander Fleming began
his research. 
Early in his medical life, Fleming became interested in the natural bacterial action of
the blood and in antiseptics. He then served in World War I as the captain of the Medical
Corps, as he continued his studies and started to work on antibacterial substances which
would not be toxic to animal tissues. In 1921, he discovered in tissues and secretions an
important bacteriolytic substance, which he named Lysozyme. About this time, he found
sensitivity titration methods and assays in human blood and other body fluids, which he
subsequently used for the titration methods of penicillin. In 1928, while working on
influenza virus, he observed that mold had developed accidently on a culture plate and
that the mold had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He was inspired to future
experiment and he found that a mold culture prevented growth of any bacteria, even when
diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.
The biggest problem was producing enough penicillin. This was hard and expensive to
accomplish. Florey and another researcher traveled to the U.S. to talk to chemical
manufacturers and ended up in Peoria, Illinois. An agricultural research center there had
developed excellent techniques of fermentation, a process needed for penicillin growth.
The agriculture of Illinois proved useful, too. The nutrient base for the penicillin
grown there was corn (maize), which was not commonly grown in Britain. The penicillin
loved it, and yielded almost 500 times as much as it had before. More vigorous and
productive strains of the mold were sought, and one of the best came from a rotting
cantaloupe from a market.
It was first used 12 years later in World War II, and it saved millions of lives. After
that, doctors started to prescribe it to their patients, and people were being cured of
diseases that many people had died of in the years before. If Fleming had not made that
discovery, millions and millions of lives would not have been saved and the population
would have never grew.