History of penicillin History of penicillin The history of penicillin follows a number of observations and discoveries of apparent evidence of antibiotic activity in molds before the modern isolation of the chemical penicillin in 1928. There are anecdotes about ancient societies using molds to treat infections, and in the following centuries many people observed the inhibition of bacterial growth by various molds. However, it is unknown if the species involved were "Penicillium" species or if the antimicrobial substances produced were penicillin. The Scottish physician Alexander Fleming was the first to suggest that a "Penicillium" mold must secrete an antibacterial substance, and the first
History of penicillin patients (one adult, the others infants) of eye infections, although a fifth patient was not so lucky. At Oxford, Howard Walter Florey organized a large and very skilled biochemical research team, notable among them Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley, to undertake clinical trials and produce a stable penicillin in quantity. In 1940, Chain and Edward Abraham reported the first indication of antibiotic resistance to penicillin, an "E. coli" strain that produced the penicillinase enzyme, which was capable of breaking down penicillin and completely negating its antibacterial effect. Between 1941 and 1943, Moyer, Coghill and Raper at the USDA Northern