On This Day in History...
Why would a scientist think that mold can be a good thing?
Scottish bacteriologist
Alexander Fleming didn't always clean up after himself in his laboratory; often he left used culture dishes lying around. On this date in 1928, Fleming noticed a bacteria-killing mold growing in one of the discarded dishes, and saw that the bacteria he was experimenting with refused to grow around the mold. A year later, he wrote about his findings, calling the mold penicillin. Two chemists, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, continued Fleming's work and showed that a refined form of the penicillin was successful in treating infected mice. By 1942, the drug had been tested on humans and the next year, it was already in use in the military, for treatment of soldiers with syphilis. Fleming, Florey and Chain shared 1945's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their work in the development of penicillin.
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One sometimes finds what one is not looking for." — Sir Alexander Fleming