Antibiotics have transformed human health by saving millions

of lives and alleviating much human misery. However, in most

parts of the world it’s easy to take treatment with antibiotics for
granted and we tend to forget that the drugs were discovered
less than a century ago.
In 1928, the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming returned
from his summer vacation and was met by an unexpected sight
in his laboratory at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. Some of his
Petri dishes containing the bacterium Staphylococcus
aureus had been contaminated with a mould. After carefully
placing the dishes under a microscope, he observed that the
mould had created a germ-free zone in which the bacteria did
not grow. Fleming concluded that the mould must be producing
an antibacterial agent, which not only inhibited the growth of the
staphylococci but, more important, might be harnessed to
combat infectious diseases. Fleming famously wrote about this
red-letter date:

“When I woke up just after dawn on September 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.”
However, it was not only Fleming’s merit that the first antibiotic
– which he later named penicillin – came to be one of the
world’s most widely used drugs. About ten years later, the
Australian pathologist Howard Florey and the German-born
biochemist Ernst Chain, isolated the active substance of
penicillin and carried out the first tests on mice. With promising
results, the new drug was ready to be used in humans in 1941.

Types of Penicillin
There are different types of penicillin, which are grouped based
on their effectiveness.
Penicillin VK and Penicillin G are natural Penicillin

 Penicillin VK – It is used to fight against bacterial

infections. Example: Ear infection.


 Penicillin G – More effective against gram-positive and

gram-negative cocci bacterial infections. Example:
susceptible bacterial infections in the stomach.

One of the first patients to receive a treatment with penicillin

was a British policeman named Albert Alexander who had
developed a deadly infection after scratching himself on a
rosebush. After five days of penicillin injections, the infection
began to heal but since there was not enough pure penicillin
available to complete the cure, Alexander eventually relapsed
and died a month later.
Later that year, Florey and Chain succeeded in developing
methods for mass production of penicillin, which was just in
time to treat the many wounded soldiers during World War II.
The following year, 400 million units of pure penicillin were
manufactured and by the end of the war, American
pharmaceutical companies produced 650 billion units a month.
The antibiotic era had truly begun and in 1945 Fleming, Florey
and Chain were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine.

Laboratory workers in the development of penicillin, England (1943).

By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, Stone
Richard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Amid a wave of unbridled optimism, one of the first to urge
caution over the new drug was actually Fleming himself. In his
Nobel lecture in 1945, Fleming presciently warned about the
dangers of misusing penicillin:
“It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the
laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to
kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the
body. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by
anyone in the shops. 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.”
Before long, Fleming’s predictions came true. The first case of
penicillin resistance was observed in 1947. The period between
1950 and 1960 is often referred to as the golden age of
antibiotic discovery, as one-half of the antibiotics commonly
used today were discovered during these years.

New possibilities for humanity

With the introduction of antibiotics, infectious diseases that
previously got people killed or severely disabled, was now
regarded as easily treatable. To give an example, the survival
rate of bacterial pneumonia dramatically increased from 20% to
85% between 1937 and 1964.

Antimicrobial therapy is used to destroy or prevent the

microorganism’s growth. However, it might not stop the
damage that is already done. For example, the anthrax-causing
bacterium Bacillus anthracis does not actually kill the host,
instead, it is the toxins that are produced that does the deed.
Antibiotics might kill the bacteria, but the toxins remain in the
body and continue to cause damage.
Today, two types of antimicrobial therapies are available:

1. Microbicidal therapy – It is used to kill microorganisms.

2.Microbiostatic therapy – It is used to prevent

microorganism growth
CONCLUSION:- In essence, our misuse of antibiotics
accelerates the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria. Today we also see an alarming increase in new
bacterial strains resistant to several antibiotics at the same time
(known as multidrug-resistant bacteria or superbugs). Such
bacteria may eventually become resistant to all existing
antibiotics and we will then be entering the post-antibiotic era.
THANKS GIVINGS:- I am very thankful to my teacher for giving me
this incredible project about discovery of antibiotics, An antibiotic is
a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is
the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting
bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used
in the treatment and prevention of such infections. They may
either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria. A limited number of
antibiotics also possess antiprotozoal activity. Antibiotics are
not effective against viruses such as the common cold or
influenza; drugs which inhibit viruses are termed antiviral drugs
or antivirals rather than antibiotics.