‘The most important factor in the development of penicillin was its necessity in World War 2’. Do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.
There were many people who contributed to the development of penicillin which finally was used in World War 2. There were many casualties from the war and doctors needed a new drug which could have cured them more quickly. It was then when eventually the discovery of penicillin was introduced and bought into action for the casualties which became a successful new drug saving many lives.
Alexander Fleming was the first man who discovered penicillin from a living organism which could kill bacteria or could at least stop them from growing. In 1928 Fleming began his work on staphylococci which was germs that made wounds septic.
By chance one day Fleming noticed mould that was growing on some Petri dishes. He noticed that the germs were growing around the mould. His individual genius thinking made him keep some of the mould and to grow some more from which he found that it killed germs.
Fleming had tested the mould on animals which caused no harm. 1929 and 1931 he wrote up his research and named it the ‘mould juice’ penicillin. He did not continue with his penicillin work to make pure penicillin, instead he returned to other work he had. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain did teamwork and took the development of penicillin a step further. Both of them in 1938 had decided to study germ-killing substances. Howard Florey had a large group of scientists one of whom was Ernst Chain who read and started work on Penicillin in 1938. Fleming’s article that he wrote on penicillin was read by Ernst Chain and Chain had attempted to produce pure penicillin. A small amount of penicillin was produced by using the freeze-dying techniques and then was tested on mice before being used on humans. Florey’s scientific experiments and thinking led him and his team to solve problems and could now make penicillin purer which could be used. More experiments and work began on making more penicillin. Florey and Chain tested it on a patient who began to recover after 4 days after receiving the penicillin but unfortunately the supplies ran out due to their inability to produce it in large quantities. Mass production of the drug was not possible without the help of large drugs companies; this meant that they were in need of industry to help them out. The government and British chemical industry were too busy in making explosives for the war to provide facilities and resources that Florey and Chain needed to make large amounts. In the US, Pearl Harbour gave financial help to Howard Florey in 1941. In 1943 Britain was able to produce mass productions of penicillin and by the time it came to 1944, there was enough penicillin to treat all the wounded allied forces in Europe. Better methods of mass productions led to the reduction in cost but that took place after the war. Soon after, penicillin was used to treat many diseases. The development of penicillin in the early 1940s led to the award of the Nobel Prize.
