Sir Alexander Fleming

I’m here with Sir Alexander Fleming to ask him about his life and his amazing discovery, Penicillin, and how it has help change the way people are treated for all sorts of bacterial infections.


Q. Hello sir I’ll start off with an easy one.
Where were you born?

A. Well I was born at Lochfield near Darvel in Airshire, Scotland on August 6th, 1881.

Q. At what age did you decided to study medicine and where did you do this?

A. It’s been such a long time but after attending St Mary’s medical School, London University and Qualifying with a distinction in 1906 I was 24. I studied under Sir Almroth Wright, whom was a pioneer in vaccine therapy that’s when I gained my M.B., B.S., with a gold medal in 1908; from there I became a lecturer at St Mary’s until 1914. “Not to bad if I do say so myself”.

Q. When and what made you decide to take the route of Microbiology?

A. It was early in my life, I became interested in the natural action of blood in antiseptics, what furthered this interest was being able to continue my studies throughout my military career. It was during this that I discovered in an important bacteriolytic substance which I named lysozyme.

Q. How did you come across penicillin?

A. I had observed that mould had developed accidentally on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. I was inspired to further experiment and found that a mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. I named this active substance penicillin.

Q. How do you feel that your discovery was taken?

A. A lot of well respected Dr’s expressed optimism that penicillin could be used as a disinfectant due to its high potency with minimal toxicity compared to other antiseptics of the day. But I remained convinced there was more to the strain.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1945/fleming-bio.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bmflem.html