1

Fleming and the discovery of penicillin

Introductory discussion:

- Have you ever heard of antibiotics? What can you tell about them?
- Have you ever taken antibiotics; what for, what disease to treat?
- Can you imagine someone dying from a simple infection today? Was an infection
of a wound the cause of death during the war?
- When do you think antibiotics were discovered, and what is the name of the first
discovered one? Do you know the name of the scientist who discovered it?

Activities based on the video document “A. Fleming Biography”

Watch attentively the documentary video, trying to catch the main ideas, and also
to remember some names, dates, and facts.

I. Checking comprehension:

1. Who was Alexander Fleming?

2. Where did A. Fleming study? Where did he work?

3. What was the main factor contributing to his decision of finding antibacterial
agents?

4. Can we consider the Fleming’s discovery accidental, why?

5. Describe the story.

 2

6. Was penicillin available in drug stores in 1929? Why?

7. Who were Howard Florey and Ernst Chain?

8. Who was awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1945?

II. True or False

 Was Alexander Fleming a bacteriologist?

 A. Fleming was enrolled in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the World War I.

 After discovering the mould killer substance, A. Fleming called it “antibiotic”.

 A. Fleming refused to share the Nobel Prize with the other two scientists
involved in the discovery of penicillin.

III. Fill in the table with information from the video document and tell
what it is referred to:
dates names places substances
1881 Alexander Fleming Ayrshire penicillin

IV. Write down the words and word combinations to be semantically

associated with the word “bacterium”

ex. biologist, vaccine, etc.

New vocabulary:
mold (mould) - any of various fungi that often form a fuzzy
growth on the surface of organic matter. Some molds cause
food to spoil, but others are beneficial, such as those used to
make certain cheeses and those from which antibiotics like
penicillin are developed. ex. bread mold.

spore - a small, usually single-celled reproductive body that

is highly resistant to dehydration and heat and is capable of
growing into a new organism, produced especially by certain bacteria, fungi, algae, and nonflowering
plants.

yield - to give forth by or as if by a natural process, especially by cultivation: a field that yields many
bushels of corn.

antibiotic - a chemical substance produced by one organism that is destructive to another. The word
antibiotic came from the Greek “antibiosis” (anti- "against"; bios- "life"), a term which means a process by
which life could be used to destroy life.

History of Penicillin
 3

Penicillin is one of the earliest discovered and widely used antibiotic agents, derived
from the Penicillium mold.

The ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, and Indians of Central America all used molds to
treat infected wounds. However, they did not understand the connection of the
antibacterial properties of mold and the treatment of diseases.

The search for antibiotics began, with the growing acceptance of the germ theory of
disease, a theory which linked bacteria and other microbes to the causation of a variety
of ailments. As a result, scientists began to search for drugs that would kill these
disease-causing bacteria.

In the late 1800s, German doctors Rudolf Emmerich and Oscar Low were the first to
make an effective medication from microbes, pyocyanase, which was the first antibiotic
to be used in hospitals. However, the drug often did not work and it is no longer used
today.

It was only in 1928, when a spore that drifted into a bacteriologists’ lab and took root on
a culture dish started a chain of events that altered forever the treatment of bacterial
infections. The bacteriologist name was Alexander Fleming, who was working at St.
Mary's Hospital in London. One day, he observed that a plate culture of Staphylococcus
had been contaminated by a blue-green mold and that colonies of bacteria adjacent to
the mold were being dissolved. Curious, Alexander Fleming grew the mold in a pure
culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing
bacteria. Naming the substance penicillin, Dr. Fleming published the results of his
investigations in 1929, noting that his discovery might have therapeutic value if it could
be produced in quantity.

At the time, however, the importance of Alexander Fleming's discovery was not known.
Use of penicillin did not begin until the 1940s when scientists Howard Florey and Ernst
Chain isolated the active ingredient and developed a powdery form of the medicine.

By 1941, another scientist Andrew J. Moyer, the lab's expert on the nutrition of molds,
had succeeded in increasing the yields of penicillin 10 times.
In 1943, the required clinical trials were performed and penicillin was shown to be the
most effective antibacterial agent to date. Penicillin production was quickly scaled up
and available in quantity to treat wounded soldiers.

This wonder-substance revolutionized medicine and changed the lives of millions.

Sir Fleming himself acknowledged this when he received the Nobel Prize in 1945:
“Everywhere I go people thank me for saving their lives. I don’t know why they do it. I
didn’t do anything. Nature makes penicillin. I only found it. My only merit is that I did not
neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My
publication in 1929 was the starting point of the work of others who developed
penicillin.”

I. Give extended answers to the following questions:

1. What are antibiotics?

 4

2. When did people start using molds in treating infected wounds?

3. What can you tell about the germ theory of disease?

4. What was the first effective medication against microbes and when was it used?

5. Who helped Alexander Fleming in the discovery and developing of penicillin?

6. What were Sir Fleming’s modest words during the award ceremony for the Nobel
Prize in Medicine, in 1945?

II. Find synonyms from the text for the words:

Wound, mold, germ, ailment, microbe, culture, result, yield

1. Microorganism, bug

2. Injure, bruise

3. Upset, complaint

4. Growth, cultivation

5. Fungus, spoiling

6. Production, output

7. Seed, spore

8. Outcome, finding

III. Match the verbs with the appropriate nouns:

antibiotics, yields, mold, root

To increase -

To grow -

To take -

To produce -

IV. Match column A with column B to make up word combinations:

A B

widely wounds
 5

infected antibiotics

effective used

antibacterial ailments

variety of agent

disease-causing medication

search for bacteria

chain of point

clinical infection

starting value

therapeutic events

bacterial trials

to produce penicillin

active form

powdery in quantity

use of ingredient

Interesting facts about antibiotics

Antibiotics are an essential part of modern medicine and are the only cure for numerous
infectious diseases. Since the discovery of penicillin in the 1940s, scientists from many
countries have developed more than 150 different antibiotics to help stop the spread of
infections. Today, antibiotics are the second most widely used class of drugs after
 6

simple analgesics. These drugs have saved millions of lives. However, the misuse of
antibiotics has led to serious problems.

o Antibiotics are generally active against multiplying bacteria, but are much less
effective against non-replicating (latent) bacteria.

o Antibiotics can't distinguish between the "good" and the "bad" bacteria.

o The worst thing one can do is to take only a few of the antibiotic prescribed. At the
beginning of treatment antibiotic wipes out the most vulnerable and weakest
bacteria. Premature termination of antibiotic course will allow relatively resistant
bacteria to survive and multiply.

o Antibiotics are not completely metabolized in the body and are released as active
compounds into the environment.

o More antibiotics are used on animals than on humans. The WHO says more than
half of global production is used on farm animals and poultry. In the last 30 years the
use of penicillin-type drugs in farm animals has increased by 600% and of
tetracyclines by 1,500%.

o Penicillin has the highest rate of allergic reactions, more than any other drug.

o The same mold that is penicillin is also used to make many cheeses including: Blue
Cheese, Gorgonzola, etc.
o No new classes of antibiotics have been discovered in recent years.

V. List the benefits and the side effects of antibiotics.

VI. Speaking.

Can we consider the discovery of penicillin an event that had changed the
world? Give arguments to support your answer.