How does penicillin cause allergy given it’s a small

molecule, which can’t be recognized by the immune

system?

I think the basic premise behind your question is

false. Your assumption is that for your immune
system to recognize an item as foreign, it needs to
be a certain size…. This is a false premise.

The immune system recognizes foreign items based

on the presence or absence of antigens present on
the items surface. These antigens are typically on
the surface, and are very small areas.

Why didn't Alexander Fleming do anything with his

accidental discovery of penicillin?

Healio- Endocrinology

- - HISTORY OF MEDICINE - -
Quora required LINK: Penicillin: An accidental
discovery changed the course of medicine .

** Penicillin: An accidental discovery changed the

course of medicine **

“”Penicillin was first discovered in 1928 and is now

the most widely used antibiotic in the world””
Endocrine Today, August 2008 .

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the

discovery of penicillin, the first naturally occurring
antibiotic drug discovered and used therapeutically.

It all started with a mold that developed on a

staphylococcus culture plate.

Since then, the discovery of penicillin changed the

course of medicine and has enabled physicians to
treat formerly severe and life-threatening illnesses
such as bacterial endocarditis, meningitis,
pneumococcal pneumonia, gonorrhea and syphilis.

Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish researcher, is

credited with the discovery of penicillin in 1928.

At the time, Fleming was experimenting with the

influenza virus in the Laboratory of the Inoculation
Department at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.

Often described as a careless lab technician,

Fleming returned from a two-week vacation to find
that a mold had developed on an accidentally
contaminated staphylococcus culture plate. Upon
examination of the mold, he noticed that the culture
prevented the growth of staphylococci.

An article published by Fleming in the British Journal

of Experimental Pathology in 1929 reads,

“The staphylococcus colonies became transparent

and were obviously undergoing lysis … the broth in
which the mold had been grown at room temperature
for one to two weeks had acquired marked
inhibitory, bactericidal and bacteriolytic properties
to many of the more common pathogenic bacteria.”

Fleming described the colony as a “fluffy white mass

which rapidly increases in size and after a few days
sporulates” and changes color from dark green to
black to bright yellow.

Even in the early experimentation stages, penicillin

had no effect against gram-negative organisms but
was effective against gram-positive bacteria.

Published reports credit Fleming as saying: “One

sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I

certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by
discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria
killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.”

Though Fleming stopped studying penicillin in 1931,

his research was continued and finished by Howard

Florey and Ernst Chain, researchers at the University
of Oxford who are credited with the development of
penicillin for use as a medicine in mice.

Widespread use ~Penicillin made a difference during

the first half of the 20th century.

The first patient was successfully treated for

streptococcal septicemia in the United States in
1942.

However, supply was limited and demand was high

in the early days of penicillin.
Penicillin helped reduce the number of deaths and
amputations of troops during World War II.

According to records, there were only 400 million

units of penicillin available during the first five
months of 1943;

by the time World War II ended, U.S. companies were

making 650 billion units a month.

To date, penicillin has become the most widely used

antibiotic in the world. – by Katie Kalvaitis .

How penicillin changed medicine: perspective from

an infectious disease expert

Theodore C. Eickhoff

The discovery of penicillin changed the world of

medicine enormously. With its development,
infections that were previously severe and often
fatal, like bacterial endocarditis, bacterial
meningitis, and pneumococcal pneumonia, could be
easily treated. Even dating all the way back to World
War II and today with the war in Iraq, soldiers
experienced injuries that would have been fatal
without penicillin and other antibiotics that were
developed subsequently. It is really impossible for
me to imagine what the world would be like without
penicillin. I question whether there would be a
discipline of infectious diseases as we know it
today.

There were beginning treatments for pneumococcal

pneumonia in the 1930s with antisera and
sulfonamides, but the use of these treatments
quickly came to a halt, and everyone began using
penicillin. This quickly led to a number of
pharmaceutical industries beginning to screen a
variety of other natural products for antibacterial
activity, which led to a whole host of new
antibiotics, such as streptomycin, aminoglycosides,
tetracycline and the like. Penicillin clearly led the
way in that development.

It is interesting that using penicillin for the

treatment of infections like pneumococcal
pneumonia and bacterial endocarditis never had a
randomized, controlled trial because the difference
with treatment was so clearly apparent that no one
even thought of doing a randomized controlled trial.