Alexander Fleming, Inventor of the First Antibiotics in the World

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SCIENCE - If we are sick continue to the doctor, sometimes we are given drugs given the information "must be spent". This drug is a class of antibiotics. Antibiotics are drugs used to kill bacteria that enter the body and cause disease. Who is the inventor of antibiotics? The first known antibiotic is penicillin. Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 by accident.

Alexander Fleming was born on 6 August 1881 in Lechfield, Scotland. Fleming is the third of Hugh Fleming's four sons from his second wife, Grace Stirling Morton. Fleming study at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School is like her brother. After World War I, Fleming conducted an antibacterial study because it was concerned to witness so many deaths of soldiers due to infection of the wounds suffered. Antiseptics are actually more powerful against their immune systems than fighting infectious bacteria. In his article published in the medical journal "The Lancet", Fleming explains that antiseptics work on the surface effectively, but the deep wound actually becomes a shelter for anaerobic bacteria from antiseptic agents so that antiseptics can not kill these unreached bacteria.

One day, Fleming did research using Staphylococcus bacteria. He left his laboratory and when he returned, Fleming found a bacterial culture contaminated with fungi. Surprisingly, it is only at the edges of the colony that bacteria do not grow, whereas in other places, bacteria still grow. Then Fleming grow the mushroom on pure media. Apparently, the fungus produces a compound that can kill bacteria. Furthermore, Fleming managed to identify the fungus is derived from the genus Penicillium. On March 7, 1929 the compound was named Penicillin.

Fleming continues to research on penicillin, but it is difficult to cultivate penicillin and isolate the compound from its fungus. After Fleming surrendered, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain continued Fleming's research at the expense of the American and British governments. They successfully purify penicillin so that it can be used to treat various diseases. Penicillin can kill bacteria that cause pneumonia, meningitis, diphtheria, gonorrhea, syphilis, bronchitis, and gangrene. Fleming also found that the use of antibiotics with too low doses or duration of use that is too short can cause bacterial resistance. For his discovery, Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945 with Florey and Chain. Fleming died in London in 1955 due to a heart attack.