The magic sneeze

It's unbelievable, but it was true from the beginning of the last century, even in the most developed countries, on average, people lived only 40 years of age. The terrible death rate of children, the plague that once claimed the lives of a large residential area, the fierce battles that followed, even the relatively light wounds also caused the infection. Bloodless healing.

This situation continued until the British microbiologist Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) one day, due to a cold, accidentally sneezed into a ceramic bowl growing bacteria in the laboratory. your.

A few days later, a strange thing happened. After looking at the bowl that was the victim of an unprecedented sneeze, Fleming realized that the production of bacteria had stopped. With a rare sensory sensibility of the scientist, he immediately understood that in human mucus, there are substances that inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria.

At that time, physicians thought that the main task in fighting the disease was to create drugs that could strengthen the body. Only a few people seek substances against the disease itself. Fleming does not belong to those people. Like most colleagues, he sees solving all medical problems in immunology.

Alexander Fleming

The First World War (1914-1918) broke out. With the rank of military lieutenant in the Royal Army, he fought in France. He not only treated but also held a gun, and attacked. But first, he is a doctor. There, on the battlefield, he understood that it was necessary to heal not only by entrenching in the fortress but also by actively destroying the enemy. The best defense is to attack!

After returning to England, Fleming reveled in drugs that kill pathogenic bacteria. It was during this research that he sneezed! And discovered lizozim - an enzyme that kills bacteria without harming healthy tissue. The opposites meet! It turns out that the body itself produces substances that microbiologists are looking for everywhere. Unfortunately, lizozim does not help in the fight against dangerous bacteria.
Bat culture bacteria by Fleming

Fleming decided to search for hidden reserves in his body. He took the lemon peel and rubbed it into his eyes, causing the tears to flow and then caught in the bowl containing bacteria. The effect was immediate, but very weak. The experiments continued and he obtained a following finding. More random.

Once he placed bowls containing a bit of meat soup that had been surveyed by the open window and two weeks later saw mold appear in a bowl. And no bacteria found in meat soup anymore.

What a surprising coincidence! The problem is that there is a rare category of Penicilium Notatum in the bowl that people are studying in the labs downstairs. The window needs to be opened so that slender spores follow the wind into the bowl of meat. And the initial temperature needs to be lowered in order for the mold to proliferate. Then the temperature needs to be increased in time for the bacteria to be destroyed. In addition, it takes a relative amount of time to produce the necessary amount of penicillin, so that this translates into the attention of the real scientist.

An incredibly wonderful combination of necessary conditions!

Bat culture bacteria by Fleming

Experiment with lzozim suggests to scientists one thing: killing bacteria is not mold but enamel produced by mold. Fleming called the enzyme penicillin and quickly collected penicillin in its pure form.

However, after using penicillin for an unsuccessful rescue of a bloody cop, Fleming realized that penicillin could only be used to treat external wounds, that it was as weak as lizozim, Less effective against dangerous diseases. And so, the job is just the beginning. The laboratory was filled with large angels containing the rind of all rotting fruits on which penicillin mold colonies grew very well. Fleming distributed his friends and acquaintances with the antiseptic that was collected as a remedy against scratches and even used the healing mold to paint!

Different bacteria are stained with different colors, often very colorful. Fleming used them to paint. In order for those vivid "pigments" to not spread to the surrounding areas of the painting and ruin the drawing, he used penicillin to smash the lines between the blobs and display the paintings in Art lovers club at Chelsea.

Fleming said that he felt like the characters of Stevenson writer's Golden Hidden Story: there was a map of the island, the treasure location had also been found, even some coins had been raised. , but the treasure is still not visible.

And yet another coincidence. A laboratory worker is planning to take some "dirty dirty water" bottles to go to, and she meets two microbiologists who are continuing to study lizozim, Howard Walter Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. The two men stopped and took those bottles to their labs. And they immediately did the work without understanding why Fleming had not thought out: from the rancid meat soup to the mold, the two men extracted the sample, refined and injected into the infected mice.

The results were astonishing, and the two men rushed to Fleming. The three scientists together removed the template, studied it in every way and after a short time, the penicillin chemical composition became clear. It is an important step to open treasure. Once you know the structure of the substance, you can find ways to exploit it. Large barrels containing rotten fruits are replaced by serious ovens, with air chambers sealed; The air is filtered clean and now it is possible to measure the amount of substance made with heavy kilograms of kilograms.

The city of Oxford has turned into a penicillin factory. Great demand. The war is going on, need to save the wounded from the gangrene, abscess, pneumonia and countless other diseases .

In 1944, all three scientists were awarded the title of knights by the Queen and became barons.

A year later, all three were awarded the Nobel Prize "For the discovery of penicillin and its therapeutic effect on bacterial infections".

During the award ceremony, Baron Henri Gvaris, one of the greatest microbiologists, said: "Without Fleming, there will be no Chain and Florey. Without Chain, there will be no Florey, and without Florey, we will not have penicillin ".