Is Alexander Fleming the greatest individual in the History of medicine?
Task 1
Watch the short video clip and start
the table below. You will add to
this table at the end of the lesson.
www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/zd2qxnb
Sir Alexander Fleming (1881 - 1955), CREDIT: Science Source / Photo Researchers / Universal Images Group/ Copyright © Photo Researchers / For Education Use Only. This and
millions of other educational images are available through Britannica Image Quest. For a free trial, please visit www.britannica.co.uk/trial
Evidence that Fleming is the greatest
individual in the history of medicine
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Evidence that Fleming is not the greatest
individual in the history of medicine
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Is Alexander Fleming the greatest individual in the History of medicine?
Task 2
Read the essay below. Decide on four or five stages in the development of penicillin and give
them each a heading. Insert the headings into the essay.
The History of Penicillin
There are many examples in medicine of false starts, and penicillin is one of them. In 1872 a
doctor called Joseph Lister noticed that mould of bacteria called penicillin killed other bacteria.
Years later, in 1884, he used this mould to treat a nurse who had an infected wound. But Lister
did not use it again. A miracle cure lay waiting for someone else to rediscover it.
During World War One a scientist called Alexander Fleming was sent to France to study soldiers'
wounds infected with streptococci and staphylococci bacteria. These wounds were not healed
by chemical antiseptics, and many soldiers died from them. Back home Fleming worked on a
finding a way of dealing with these bacteria.
Ten years later, in 1928, Fleming found what he'd been seeking. He was working at St Mary's
Hospital, London. Going on holiday he left a pile of petri dishes containing bacteria on his
laboratory bench. On his return he sorted out the dishes and noticed mould on one of them.
Around the mould, the staphylococci bacteria had disappeared.
Fleming carried out experiments with the penicillin mould on living cells. He discovered that if
it was diluted it killed bacteria without harming the cells. He made a list of the germs it killed
and used it to treat another scientist's eye infection. However, it did not seem to work on
deeper infections and in any case it was taking ages to create enough penicillin to use.
In 1929 Fleming wrote about penicillin in a medical journal but nobody thought his article was
important. He had not used penicillin on animals to heal infections so had no evidence of it
being useful.
In 1938 Florey and Chain were researching how germs could be killed. They read Fleming's
article on penicillin and realised that it could be very effective so they tried to get funding from
the government. They got £25. With a war about to start and no proof that penicillin could help
people, the government had other things to spend its money on. Instead Florey asked for money
from America and got enough to pay for five years’ research.
Florey and Chain discovered that penicillin helped mice recover from infections but to treat one
person they needed 3000 times as much penicillin! Even large drug companies could not afford
to fund this quantity of work. So Florey and Chain began growing penicillin in whatever they
could, using hundreds of hospital bedpans, even though bedpans were now in demand to make
Spitfires!
By 1941 there was enough penicillin to test it on one person. The volunteer was Albert
Alexander, a policeman who had developed septicaemia – a bacterial infection that attacks the
whole body – from a tiny cut. Alexander was dying. Chemical drugs had not killed the infection.
Florey and Chain requested permission to try their new 'purified' penicillin, and injections began.
The penicillin worked and Alexander began to recover. However, the penicillin ran out after
five days, even though Florey and Chain were extracting unused penicillin from the man's urine
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Is Alexander Fleming the greatest individual in the History of medicine?
and reusing it in a desperate attempt to keep treating him. The poor policeman became ill
again and died. Penicillin had shown that it worked and that it wasn't harmful to the patient –
but how could they make enough of it?
Florey and Chain needed help to mass produce penicillin but English factories were busy helping
the war effort and couldn't be used. So Florey went to America – at just the right time. In
1941 America was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour and entered the war. The
American government realised the potential of penicillin for treating wounded soldiers and made
interest-free loans to US companies to buy the expensive equipment needed for making
penicillin. Soon British firms were also mass producing penicillin, enough to treat the allied
wounded on D-Day in 1944 – over 2.3 million doses.
The discovery of penicillin marks the start of modern antibiotics and has saved an estimated 200
million lives in less than seventy years.
Task 3
Using the stages you decided upon above, you now need to construct your own diagram to
explain the development of Penicillin. Below is a diagram based on the work of Pasteur and
Koch to give you some ideas.
Pasteur's work
1857-1865
Pasteurisation and
Germ Theory
However Pasteur
could not isolate
individual germs
which caused disease.
So ...
Koch's work
1873-1880
Developed method to
isolate bacteria and
found the germ
causing Anthrax
Pasteur then used
these ideas to take
the next step …
Pasteur's work
1879-1881
Chicken Cholera,
Anthrax
In response Koch ...
Koch's work
1881-1882
Applied methods to
identifying human
diseases e.g. 1882
Typhoid, 1883
Cholera
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Is Alexander Fleming the greatest individual in the History of medicine?
Task 4
For each factor listed below, find one or two examples from the history of penicillin to
illustrate that factor at work:

Government

Chance

War

Scientific Experiment

Industry

Communications

Individuals
Then answer the following question:
Which of the factors above was the most important in the development of Penicillin?
Task 5: Conclusion
Go back to the table in Task 1 and add any other evidence about Alexander Fleming
which you’ve discovered in these activities. Does he deserve to be called ‘the greatest
individual in the history of medicine’?
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