Wednesday 10 February 2016

Sir Alexander Fleming

Synthetic Production of Penicillin TR1468.jpgSir Alexander Fleming  (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance of penicillin (Penicillin G) from the mould Penicillin in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy!
Following World War I, Fleming actively searched for anti-bacterial agents, having witnessed the death of many soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds. Antiseptics killed the patients' immunological defences more effectively than they killed the invading bacteria. In an article he submitted for the medical journal The lancet during World War I, Fleming described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result of his own glass blowing skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were killing more soldiers than infection itself during World War I. Antiseptics worked well on the surface, but deep wounds tended to shelter anaerobic bacteria from the antiseptic agent, and antiseptics seemed to remove beneficial agents produced that protected the patients in these cases at least as well as they removed bacteria, and did nothing to remove the bacteria that were out of reach. Sir Almroth Wright strongly supported Fleming's findings, but despite this, most army physicians over the course of the war continued to use antiseptics even in cases where this worsened the condition of the patients.
This is him in his laboratory BUSY! BUSY! BUSY!

5 comments:

  1. Hi Mateo, that's really good information.

    from Chloe

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  2. You have written a lot Mateo!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. You have written a lot Mateo!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete