Announcing the truth about the first patient using penicillin

The discovery of penicillin in 1928 is often told as an accident. On that day, Fleming was too tired to lazy to wash his lab dishes. The next day, when he woke up, he saw a clean petri dish of bacteria.

It turns out that the fungus proliferates in the lab dish that secretes an antibiotic that kills the bacteria around it. And thanks to his own laziness - Fleming was fortunate to save the world.

However, things are not so random and simple. In fact, a few years after it was discovered, the Scottish doctor plunged into the pursuit of pure penicillin but failed.

After more than a decade, the new work was handed over to Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley at Oxford University. It was at the time of World War II that a request was made to treat wounds for soldiers that new work was promoted.

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, but he could not prepare penicillin.

The first patient to be treated with penicillin was a policeman named Constable Albert Alexander . According to records, Alexander had a blood infection, starting from the fact that he was stabbed by roses when he was cutting flowers in a beautiful garden in the village of Wootton, Oxfordshire, early fall of 1940.

It was at this point that researchers felt that they could test penicillin in humans - after the drug cured the infection in mice and demonstrated its safety in a patient with a disease. inconsistently agree to test it.

Alexander's situation quickly deteriorated after a blood infection progressed. Located in Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, his grandfather was full of abscesses and an eye was forced to remove surgery.

So doctors think penicillin was his last chance and decided to use it. Within 5 days, Alexander was given 200 mg of penicillin, then increased to 300 mg every 3 hours.

The doctors noted a remarkable recovery that took place with Alexander after only a short time. However, the penicillin formula at the time caused it to be excreted from the body so quickly, Florey compared his task as if trying to fill a sewerless bath.

That's why doctors have to use large doses, every 3 hours, instead of 12 hours a day like antibiotics today.

Alexander's urine was collected and brought to the penicillin production unit at Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. Here, Chain desperately gathers and recovers valuable amounts of Alexander's urine penicillin for reuse. But he was unable to collect enough. Alexander recurred and eventually died.

It turned out that the pink thorny story caused Alexander to have a blood infection just as an illusion.

Despite the failed treatment, Alexander's temporary recovery convinced the scientists that in case they had enough penicillin, Alexander would be cured completely.

With Heatley, Florey came to the United States. Here, he persuaded a number of large pharmaceutical companies (including Merck, ER Squibb & Sons, Charles Pfizer & Co. and Lederle Laboratories) to scale up penicillin production.

As a result, at the end of World War II, thousands of Allied soldiers survived battle wounds and were treated for sexually transmitted infections, including gonorrhea. The antibiotic revolution was then officially started.

Recently, author Mike Barrett on Mosaic has interviewed Sheila LeBlanc, Constable Alexander's daughter, still living in California. Barrett emailed Sheila with some questions and got her answer back.

Sheila recounted that after her father died in 1941, she and her brother were taken to an orphanage because their mother, Edith, needed to work.

Howard Florey convinced American pharmaceutical companies to produce mass antibiotics, when the antibiotic era began.

In the 1950s, Sheila fell in love with an American guy. They married and moved to the United States. It was not until the 1960s that Sheila's family recognized Albert Alexander in medical history notes, after a German journalist appeared at Edith Alexander's doorstep and asked if he could ask for a picture. pictures of the first patient treated with penicillin.

The fact that Sheila provided, turned out that the pink thorns caused her father's blood infection to be false, though Sheila recalls that her home actually had a beautiful rose garden. Her father was infected from a tear near his mouth, which occurred during a German bombing attack at Southampton, where he was stationed in November 1940.