Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin.
In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third "greatest Scot" in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace. ==Early life and education== Born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Alexander Fleming was the third of four children of farmer Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) and Grace Stirling Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighbouring farmer.
His elder brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to him that he should follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington; he qualified with an MBBS degree from the school with distinction in 1906. Fleming, who was a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force from 1900 to 1914, had been a member of the rifle club at the medical school.
His elder brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to him that he should follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington; he qualified with an MBBS degree from the school with distinction in 1906. Fleming, who was a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force from 1900 to 1914, had been a member of the rifle club at the medical school.
His elder brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to him that he should follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington; he qualified with an MBBS degree from the school with distinction in 1906. Fleming, who was a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force from 1900 to 1914, had been a member of the rifle club at the medical school.
In 1908, he gained a BSc degree with gold medal in Bacteriology, and became a lecturer at St Mary's until 1914. Commissioned lieutenant in 1914 and promoted captain in 1917, Fleming served throughout World War I in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was Mentioned in Dispatches.
His elder brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to him that he should follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington; he qualified with an MBBS degree from the school with distinction in 1906. Fleming, who was a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force from 1900 to 1914, had been a member of the rifle club at the medical school.
In 1908, he gained a BSc degree with gold medal in Bacteriology, and became a lecturer at St Mary's until 1914. Commissioned lieutenant in 1914 and promoted captain in 1917, Fleming served throughout World War I in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was Mentioned in Dispatches.
Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.It was around that time that the first clinical case of penicillin resistance was reported. ==Personal life== On 24 December 1915, Fleming married a trained nurse, Sarah Marion McElroy of Killala, County Mayo, Ireland.
In 1908, he gained a BSc degree with gold medal in Bacteriology, and became a lecturer at St Mary's until 1914. Commissioned lieutenant in 1914 and promoted captain in 1917, Fleming served throughout World War I in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was Mentioned in Dispatches.
In an article published in the medical journal The Lancet in 1917, he described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result of his own glass blowing skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were killing more soldiers than infection itself during the war.
In 1918 he returned to St Mary's Hospital, where he was elected Professor of Bacteriology of the University of London in 1928.
Fleming had teased Allison of his "excessive tidiness in the laboratory," and Allison rightly attributed such untidiness as the success of Fleming's experiments, and said, "[If] he had been as tidy as he thought I was, he would not have made his two great discoveries." In the late 1921, while he was maintaining agar plates for bacteria, he found that one of the plates was contaminated with bacteria from the air.
His research notebook dated 21 November 1921 showed a sketch of the culture plate with a small note: “Staphyloid coccus from A.F.'s nose." He also identified the bacterium present in the nasal mucus as Micrococcus Lysodeikticus, giving the species name (meaning "lysis indicator" for its susceptibility to lysozymal activity).
Why should it become a profit-making monopoly of manufacturers in another country?From 1921 until his death in 1955, Fleming owned a country home named "The Dhoon" in Barton Mills, Suffolk. == Death == On 11 March 1955, Fleming died at his home in London of a heart attack.
Again with one exception little comment or attention was paid to it. Reporting in the 1 May 1922 issue of the Biological Sciences under the title "On a remarkable bacteriolytic element found in tissues and secretions," Fleming wrote:In this communication I wish to draw attention to a substance present in the tissues and secretions of the body, which is capable of rapidly dissolving certain bacteria.
In 1918 he returned to St Mary's Hospital, where he was elected Professor of Bacteriology of the University of London in 1928.
In 1928, he studied the variation of Staphylococcus aureus grown under natural condition, after the work of Joseph Warwick Bigger, who discovered that the bacterium could grow into a variety of types (strains).
On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory having spent a holiday with his family at Suffolk.
Fleming gave some of his original penicillin samples to his colleague-surgeon Arthur Dickson Wright for clinical test in 1928.
After some months of calling it "mould juice" or "the inhibitor", he gave the name penicillin on 7 March 1929 for the antibacterial substance present in the mould. ==== Reception and publication ==== Fleming presented his discovery on 13 February 1929 before the Medical Research Club.
Fleming published his discovery in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, but little attention was paid to the article.
The treatment started on 9 January 1929 but without any effect.
Keith Bernard Rogers, who had joined St Mary's as medical student in 1929, was captain the London University rifle team and was about to participate in inter-hospital rifle shooting competition when he developed conjunctivitis.
"As a result, penicillin languished largely forgotten in the 1930s," as Milton Wainwright described. As late as in 1936, there was no appreciation for penicillin.
He cured eye infections (conjunctivitis) of one adult and three infants (neonatal conjunctivitis) on 25 November 1930. Fleming also successfully treated severe conjunctivitis in 1932.
It is said that the "penicillin worked and the match was won." However, the report that "Keith was probably the first patient to be treated clinically with penicillin ointment" is no longer true as Paine's medical records showed up. There is a popular assertion both in popular and scientific literature that Fleming largely abandoned penicillin work in the early 1930s.
The importance of lysozyme was not recognised, and Fleming was well aware of this, in his presidential address at the Royal Society of Medicine meeting on 18 October 1932, he said:I choose lysozyme as the subject for this address for two reasons, firstly because I have a fatherly interest in the name, and, secondly, because its importance in connection with natural immunity does not seem to be generally appreciated.
He cured eye infections (conjunctivitis) of one adult and three infants (neonatal conjunctivitis) on 25 November 1930. Fleming also successfully treated severe conjunctivitis in 1932.
Kissick went so far as to say that "Fleming had abandoned penicillin in 1932...
"As a result, penicillin languished largely forgotten in the 1930s," as Milton Wainwright described. As late as in 1936, there was no appreciation for penicillin.
As late as in 1939, Fleming's notebook shows attempts to make better penicillin production using different media.
Shortly after the team published its first results in 1940, Fleming telephoned Howard Florey, Chain's head of department, to say that he would be visiting within the next few days.
After the team had developed a method of purifying penicillin to an effective first stable form in 1940, several clinical trials ensued, and their amazing success inspired the team to develop methods for mass production and mass distribution in 1945. Fleming was modest about his part in the development of penicillin, describing his fame as the "Fleming Myth" and he praised Florey and Chain for transforming the laboratory curiosity into a practical drug.
He also kept, grew, and distributed the original mould for twelve years, and continued until 1940 to try to get help from any chemist who had enough skill to make penicillin.
Fleming bore these disappointments stoically, but they did not alter his views or deter him from continuing his investigation of penicillin.In 1941, the British Medical Journal reported that "[Penicillin] does not appear to have been considered as possibly useful from any other point of view." ==== Purification and stabilisation ==== In Oxford, Ernst Boris Chain and Edward Abraham were studying the molecular structure of the antibiotic.
In 1941, he published a method for assessment of penicillin effectiveness.
In August 1942, Harry Lambert (an associate of Fleming's brother Robert) was admitted to St Mary's Hospital due to life-threatening infection of the nervous system (streptococcal meningitis).
The War Cabinet was convinced of the usefulness upon which Sir Cecil Weir, Director General of Equipment, called for a meeting on the mode of action on 28 September 1942.
I hope this evil can be averted." He cautioned not to use penicillin unless there was a properly diagnosed reason for it to be used, and that if it were used, never to use too little, or for too short a period, since these are the circumstances under which bacterial resistance to antibiotics develops. It had been experimentally shown in 1942 that S.
Maurois, André. Nobel Lectures, the Physiology or Medicine 1942–1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964 An Outline History of Medicine.
Fleming published the clinical case in The Lancet in 1943. Upon this medical breakthrough, Allison informed the British Ministry of Health of the importance of penicillin and the need for mass production.
The Penicillin Committee was created on 5 April 1943.
Churchill was saved by Lord Moran, using sulphonamides, since he had no experience with penicillin, when Churchill fell ill in Carthage in Tunisia in 1943.
The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Post on 21 December 1943 wrote that he had been saved by penicillin.
By D-Day in 1944, enough penicillin had been produced to treat all the wounded of the Allied troops. ====Antibiotic resistance==== Fleming also discovered very early that bacteria developed antibiotic resistance whenever too little penicillin was used or when it was used for too short a period.
Moyer patenting the method of penicillin production in US in 1944, he was furious, and commented:I found penicillin and have given it free for the benefit of humanity.
After the team had developed a method of purifying penicillin to an effective first stable form in 1940, several clinical trials ensued, and their amazing success inspired the team to develop methods for mass production and mass distribution in 1945. Fleming was modest about his part in the development of penicillin, describing his fame as the "Fleming Myth" and he praised Florey and Chain for transforming the laboratory curiosity into a practical drug.
On 26 June 1945, he made the following cautionary statements: "the microbes are educated to resist penicillin and a host of penicillin-fast organisms is bred out ...
After his first wife's death in 1949, Fleming married Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, a Greek colleague at St.
In 1951 he was elected the Rector of the University of Edinburgh for a term of three years. ==Scientific contributions== ===Antiseptics=== During World War I, Fleming with Leonard Colebrook and Sir Almroth Wright joined the war efforts and practically moved the entire Inoculation Department of St Mary's to the British military hospital at Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Mary's, on 9 April 1953; she died in 1986. Fleming came from a Presbyterian background, while his first wife Sarah was a (lapsed) Roman Catholic.
Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin.
Why should it become a profit-making monopoly of manufacturers in another country?From 1921 until his death in 1955, Fleming owned a country home named "The Dhoon" in Barton Mills, Suffolk. == Death == On 11 March 1955, Fleming died at his home in London of a heart attack.
Maurois, André. Nobel Lectures, the Physiology or Medicine 1942–1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964 An Outline History of Medicine.
The source of the fungal contaminant was established in 1966 as coming from La Touche's room, which was directly below Fleming's. Fleming grew the mould in a pure culture and found that the culture broth contained an antibacterial substance.
The species was reassigned as Micrococcus luteus in 1972.
Brown, Kevin. Alexander Fleming: The Man and the Myth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984.
London: Butterworths, 1985.
Mary's, on 9 April 1953; she died in 1986. Fleming came from a Presbyterian background, while his first wife Sarah was a (lapsed) Roman Catholic.
His alma mater, St Mary's Hospital Medical School, merged with Imperial College London in 1988.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
But Sir Henry Harris said in 1998: "Without Fleming, no Chain; without Chain, no Florey; without Florey, no Heatley; without Heatley, no penicillin." ==== Medical use and mass production ==== In his first clinical trial, Fleming treated his research scholar Stuart Craddock who had developed severe infection of the nasal antrum (sinusitis).
In 1999, he was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century.
In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third "greatest Scot" in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace. ==Early life and education== Born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Alexander Fleming was the third of four children of farmer Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) and Grace Stirling Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighbouring farmer.
Porter, Roy, ed. Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution, Stroud, Sutton, 2004.
In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third "greatest Scot" in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace. ==Early life and education== Born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Alexander Fleming was the third of four children of farmer Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) and Grace Stirling Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighbouring farmer.
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