Penicillin
Overview
Penicillin was the first natural antibiotic used to kill or inhibit bacteria in humans, rendering once-fatal infections treatable. The antibiotic was preceded by sulfa drugs, but those were lab-made, generally less effective, and more likely to cause side effects. Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident in 1928, though the substance wouldn’t become clinically available until 1941.
It took researchers—led by Oxford scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain—around a decade to develop methods to purify and mass-produce penicillin in the early 1940s. After the US entered World War II, the antibiotic was being manufactured on an industrial scale—cutting Allied battlefield death rates from bacterial pneumonia from about 18% in World War I to less than 1% in World War II.
Experts agree that penicillin is one of history's most important medical discoveries. The celebrated “wonder drug” spawned a new class of antibiotic treatments, and estimates suggest the broader class of antibiotics has saved more than 500 million lives worldwide. The drugs are used to treat bacterial conditions such as strep throat, pneumonia, syphilis, ear infections, urinary tract infections, and more.
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