In July 1943, the War Production Board drew up a plan for the mass distribution of penicillin stocks to Allied troops fighting in Europe. By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients. Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller. On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by Merck & Co. Mass culture of the mould and search for better moulds immediately followed. They approached the USDA Northern Regional Research Laboratory (NRRL, now the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research) at Peoria, Illinois, where facilities for large-scale fermentations were established. Failing to persuade the British government, Florey and Heatley travelled to the US in June 1941 with their mould samples in order to interest the US government for large-scale production. Mass productionĪs the medical application was established, the Oxford team found that it was impossible to produce usable amounts in their laboratory. Following the medical breakthrough the British War Cabinet set up the Penicillin Committee on 5 April 1943 that led to projects for mass production. Fleming published his clinical trial in The Lancet in 1943. Lambert showed improvement from the very next day of the treatment, and was completely cured within a week. Florey willingly gave the only available sample to Fleming. By that time the Oxford team could produce only a small amount. The first successful use of pure penicillin was when Fleming treated Harry Lambert of fatal infection of the nervous system (streptococcal meningitis) in 1942. In December 1942, survivors of the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston were the first burn patients to be successfully treated with penicillin. Subsequently, several other patients were treated successfully. In 1941, they treated a policeman, Albert Alexander, with a severe face infection his condition improved, but then supplies of penicillin ran out and he died. In 1940, Australian scientist Howard Florey (later Baron Florey) and a team of researchers ( Ernst Chain, Edward Abraham, Arthur Duncan Gardner, Norman Heatley, Margaret Jennings, Jean Orr-Ewing and Arthur Gordon Sanders) at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford made progress in making concentrated penicillin from fungal culture broth. In 1930, Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Royal Infirmary in Sheffield, successfully treated ophthalmia neonatorum, an infection in infants, with penicillin (fungal extract) on November 25, 1930. Howard Florey (pictured), Alexander Fleming and Ernst Chain shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for their work on penicillin. They are now used regularly in hospitals. Because it is such a popular antibiotic, penicillin is the most common cause of serious allergic reactions to a drug. Rarely, patients who are allergic to penicillin get a fever, vomit, or have serious skin irritation. Symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, or rash. Together with another scientist Ernest Boris Chain, Fleming and Florey were given the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. Australian scientist Howard Walter Florey made the penicillin mould into a medicine. Penicillin was discovered when Fleming noticed a mould that was stopping bacteria from growing in a petri dish. It was first used widely during World War II. Penicillin is sometimes used to treat tonsillitis, meningitis, and pneumonia as well as other diseases. There is now a whole group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium: penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V. The antibiotic is naturally produced by fungi of the genus Penicillium. Penicillin was discovered by Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928, but it was not mass-produced until the 1940s. Chemists keep changing part of its structure in the effort to keep it working against the bacteria. Many strains of baceria are now resistant. It was one of the first to be discovered, and worked well against staphylococci and streptococci. Penicillin is a common antibiotic, used to treat bacterial infections. Certain molds naturally produce Penicilin.
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