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Major Milestones in the Identification and Development of Penicillin

By roweewee

  • Discovery that mould can kill different bacteria

    Alexander Fleming looked petri dishes which had colonies of Staphylococcus and found one where a dot of mould was growing. He discovered that mould was able to kill different types of bacteria.

  • Fleming published his discovery

  • Howard Florey, Ernst Chain turned penicillin into medicine

    Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and workers from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology turned penicillin into a medicine to save lives through processing almost 500L of mould filtrate each week.

  • Heatley got penicillin from filtrate to amyl acetate to water.

  • Edward Abraham used technique to remove pollutants from penicillin.

  • Florey showed penicillin protected mice from Streptococci

  • Albert Alexander, first person to use pencillin

    Albert Alexander was the first person to use penicillin after scratching his mouth while pruning a rose bush which caused a deadly infection. He was improving after a few days but penicillin ran out and he died afterwards.

  • Florey & Heatley visited US to offer API to produce penicillin

  • Moyer increased penicillin production, lactose as sucrose

  • Moyer found corn-steep liquor produced more penicillin.

  • WPB increased production of penicillin

  • 21 billion units of penicillin made in the US

  • 1663 billion units of penicillin made in the US

  • 6.8 trillion units of penicillin made in the US

  • Penicillin distributed to pharmacies in US

  • Penicillin sold as prescription only drug in the UK

  • 133229 billion units of penicillin made in the US