In the early 20th century, a simple sore throat could be a death sentence. While doctors knew what bacteria were, they had nothing in their arsenal with which to fight them. But one man’s discovery would change everything, forever altering the course of medical history. The best part? It all happened completely by ACCIDENT.
_____________________________
Recommended book: Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution 📚💊✨👉 Get it here! https://amzn.to/4gOnJxY🔗💡 As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission from qualifying purchases. This comes at no extra cost to you! ✅
_________________________
It’s 1927. You wake up one morning with a sore throat, rash, and fever. After a week of not feeling better, you finally decided to call the local physician. He arrives, feels your neck, and inspects your tonsils. Finally, he delivers the crushing blow: you have strep throat. Your family members in the room begin to cry, almost unable to look you in the eye. A pit forms in your stomach as you weakly ask, “How long have I left?” Grim-faced, the doctor shakes his head, sadly explaining how the bacteria will spread to your sinuses and ears, then into either your bloodstream, heart, lungs, or brain. Depending on your definition of luck, you’ll either be dead in 24 hours or 24 days.
This was the story for tens of thousands of people every year from the beginning of modern times until 1928. It wasn’t until that year that a Scottish microbiologist with a tendency to be a bit messy would take a holiday to the beach and change medical science forever…
Medicine Before 1940
Centuries after the days when doctors talked of black magic and bodily humors, medicine was still fraught with risk. Even though medical professionals were far more informed about how the body worked than they had been previously, they were still woefully unprepared to combat the constant barrage of illnesses affecting their patients.
Perhaps the worst culprit of all was bacteria, which was – quite literally – everywhere.
Pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, and strep throat, all of which are rather easily treated today, were a death sentence for anywhere from 15 to 50% of those infected. Even a simple cut or scrape could quickly spiral out of control, eventually leading to sepsis and death.
Today, few people realize that for the vast majority of the time humans have been on earth, a sliver in the finger could be a death sentence. And if it wasn’t, the process to remove it could do the job just as well. After all, the risks associated with surgery meant that many procedures, even minor ones, carried significant danger. Childbirth, the most natural process on earth, would often leave women suffering from puerperal fever, a bacterial infection contracted during delivery.
In fact, risks to mothers and babies were so high that some cultures avoided naming infants until they reached at least two years old. Even if you did make it to adolescence, your life would be spent in constant threat of an early grave. The average life expectancy in the U.S. in the early 1920s was around 56 years. If you were a member of the underclass, that dropped down to around 45 years. And in millions of cases each year, it was a bacterial infection that did the victim in.
The Bacteria Problem
Bacteria – small single-celled organisms – are among the most abundant and diverse forms of life on Earth. They live in water, soil, air, and inside other organisms, including the foods we eat. There are billions inside your body right now, helping to digest your food and keeping you healthy. But not all bacteria are beneficial. Some, known as pathogens, can cause diseases when they make their way into plants, animals, and humans.
So, what did we do about it?
Well, most of the time, we died.
Even after engineers managed to build the Titanic, antibiotics were more of a dream than a reality, with doctors relying almost entirely on external antiseptics and the patient’s beleaguered immune system. For reference, physicians hadn’t even understood the importance of hand washing until it was suggested by a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis in – wait for it – 1847. Even then, they laughed at him for years until he actually proved the practice was valid.
So, in an effort to treat infections, doctors turned to a variety of remedies – some more questionable than others. Herbal remedies like garlic and vinegar were popular, but their ability to combat bacterial infections was limited. In many cases, wounds were doused in alcohol or carbolic acid, or pints of blood were drained from patients via hoses or leeches. For more internal issues like syphilis, toxic substances like mercury and arsenic were sometimes used, but these “cures” often did more harm than good.
The inability to treat bacterial infections led to a strong focus on prevention. Doctors emphasized hygiene and sanitation, knowing that preventing infections was often their only defense. Despite their best efforts, even routine illnesses like urinary tract infections were killing thousands of people a year in the most advanced cities in the world.
But Alexander Fleming changed all of that.
Alexander Fleming
Sir Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire, Scotland in 1881. Though he seemed intent on working in shipping, he inherited some money and decided to attend medical school. Like most lads from the UK, he fought in WWI before returning to work at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.
While brilliant, Fleming earned a reputation for being a bit eccentric. And when he committed himself to studying the effects of Staphylococcus bacteria, a strain he’d seen do immense damage to his fellow soldiers during the war, expectations were mostly tempered. One of his most common eccentricities was a tendency to be a bit messy – often leaving his laboratory tables crowded with papers and samples from his projects.
In September 1928, Fleming inoculated some Petri dishes with bacterial cultures but failed to clean them up before leaving his lab that evening. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that he was leaving to go on vacation in Suffolk with his family. Upon returning, he noticed that one of the dishes had become contaminated with mold.
And here’s where his other eccentricity – overwhelming curiosity – comes into play. Instead of discarding the dish, as many scientists might have done, Fleming instead put it under his microscope. Upon doing so, he instantly discovered that all of the bacteria surrounding the mold had been killed, while those farther away were still thriving.
Somehow, the mold was producing a substance capable of killing bacteria.
Upon studying the mold, he identified it as Penicillium notatum, a fungus that feeds on decaying organic matter in soil, vegetation, and indoor environments. In failing to put away his bacteria samples and leaving them alone for such a long period, Fleming had allowed them to become infected with the fungus. This, in turn, allowed him to discover an inexpensive “miracle cure” to one of the biggest problems in the history of medicine: penicillin.
Though he was aware of the implications of his discovery right away, isolating and producing penicillin in large quantities proved to be a major challenge, and it would be years before Fleming’s discovery gained the recognition it deserved. It wasn’t until a team of scientists at Oxford University picked up where Fleming left off that the full potential of penicillin was realized. Their work in the late 1930s and early 1940s enabled the mass production of penicillin, making it widely available and saving countless lives by the time the next major war arrived.
The World After Penicillin
To say that the introduction of penicillin in the 1940s was revolutionary would be an almost criminal understatement.
It marked the beginning of a completely new era in medicine. With the advent of this new antibiotic, doctors suddenly had a powerful tool to combat once-deadly diseases. Pneumonia, which had been a leading cause of death, especially among children and the elderly, became far more treatable. Strep throat, which could lead to rheumatic fever and permanent heart damage, was now so easy to treat that patients could return to work after just a few days of downtime.
Of course, Penicillin’s impact on surgery was equally profound. Surgeons could now perform more complex and invasive procedures with much greater confidence that their patients would recover without complications. As such, surgeons took more risks, which lead to the development of advanced surgical techniques, including organ transplants and open-heart surgery.
And don’t forget the children, because Penicillin also revolutionized childbirth, significantly reducing maternal and infant mortality rates. By 1950, life expectancy in the U.S. had ballooned to 65 years for men and over 71 years for women.
It’s worth mentioning that Fleming’s investigations into bacteria were mostly inspired by the medical horrors he witnessed during World War I. In those days, the most common treatment for a bacterial infection was amputation, a solution that was nearly as likely to result in their death anyways. But Fleming got his revenge. During WWII, penicillin was used to treat infected wounds in soldiers, drastically reducing the number of wartime deaths from infection by more than 30%.
Finally, the discovery of penicillin also spurred a wave of research into other antibiotics. Drugs like streptomycin and tetracycline were developed in the following decades, further expanding doctors’ ability to treat bacterial infections.
Conclusion
Alexander Fleming was the best kind of celebrity: an accidental one. Through actions that would otherwise be referred to as borderline irresponsible, he was able to save millions of lives in his lifetime and will likely save billions more in the coming centuries. Every single person who has ever suffered strep throat, a UTI, or other bacterial infection and lived to tell the tale owes this plucky Scotsman a debt of gratitude.
_____________________
Curious to see these medical stories come to life? Visit my YouTube channel, where I’ve turned these stories into compelling documentaries. 👉 Click this link to explore the channel! 🔗💡
_____________________
Disclaimer
The content on the blog “Medical History Book” is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Readers should not rely on the information provided in the articles for medical decisions. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional for any medical concerns or questions. The authors and creators of this blog are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided herein. Use this blog at your own discretion.
