Who owns the discovery of penicillin? Detailed answer

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Who owns the discovery of penicillin? Detailed answer

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Who owns the discovery of penicillin?

Contrary to popular belief, Sir Alexander Fleming is far down the list.

For more than a thousand years, Bedouins in North Africa have been preparing a healing ointment from molds scraped off donkey harnesses.

In 1897, a young military doctor from Lyon named Ernst Duchen made a "discovery" by observing how Arab stable boys used mold from still damp saddles to treat wounds on the backs of horses rubbed with these same saddles.

Duchene carefully examined the mold taken, identified it as Penicillium glaucum, tested it on guinea pigs for the treatment of typhoid and found its destructive effect on Escherichia coli bacteria. It was the first ever clinical trial of what would soon become world famous penicillin.

The young man presented the results of his research in the form of a doctoral dissertation, persistently offering to continue work in this area, but the Pasteur Institute in Paris did not even bother to confirm receipt of the document - apparently because Duchenne was only twenty-three, and indeed, what worthy could write to anyone not a well-known student of the military medical school?

Subsequently, army duty intervened, and in 1912 Duchenne died in obscurity from tuberculosis, a disease that would soon be overcome with the help of his own discovery.

Well-deserved fame came to Duchenne after his death, in 1949 - five years after Sir Alexander Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery (for the third time) of the antibiotic effect of penicillin.

The term "penicillin" was coined by Fleming in 1929. By a stroke of luck, the result of a combination of circumstances so incredible that they are almost unbelievable, the scientist drew attention to the antibacterial properties of the mold, which he identified as Penicillium rubrum. As it turned out, Fleming's definition was wrong. Only many years later, Charles Tom corrected his assessment and gave the fungus the correct name - Penicillum notatum.

This mold was originally called Penicillium due to the fact that, under a microscope, its spore-bearing legs looked like tiny brushes. And in Latin, a writing brush was called penicillum - the same word from which the English "pencil" ("pencil") comes. Although in reality the cells of the mold Penicillum notatum rather resemble something completely different and more terrible - the carpal bones of the human skeleton. A rather revealing photograph of this fungus can be seen on the website at: http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/Toms_fungi/nov2003.html.

Famous types of cheese - such as Stilton, Roquefort, Danish Blue, Gorgonzola, Camembert, Limburger and Brie - contain penicillin.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

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