Cr. D

Outline

Introduction – Brief information about penicillin and antibiotics

Body 1 – History of penicillin

Body 2 – Benefit of penicillin

Body 3 - Answer of unit question

Conclusion

Essay

Antibiotics are medicine that inhibits the growth of certain type of disease and infection. As humankind found out that bacteria or germs caused many illness, people started searching drugs that would kill the bacteria. And penicillin which is produced naturally by a mold was the first drug that people figured out. It was noticed by English medical researcher, Alexander Fleming, by chance.

Penicillin is invented by Alexander Fleming, but there were some experiments to invent antibiotic before him. In 1896, Ernest Duchesne, a French doctor, noticed that some molds killed bacteria. He recorded what he found, but he wasn’t able to carry on his research. In 1929, Alexander Fleming accidentally noticed that a blue-green mold which is produced by juice in lab killed all the bacteria around it. However, he couldn’t know how to make enough molds to treat people. In 1938 researcher at Oxford University who read Fleming’s journal about his discovery experimented with Fleming’s idea. Finally in 1941 they could make enough penicillin to treat a few patients. Before World War Two started it was not easy to get penicillin. It wasn’t produced in large quantity. But mass production of penicillin started during World War Two and the soldiers and people who got injured could be cured with penicillin.

Although some people are allergic to penicillin and it doesn’t have any effect on some kinds of bacteria, it is considered as the most popular antibiotic. One reason that makes penicillin popular is the cost of penicillin. Compared with other antibiotics, such as cephalosporin, amino glycoside and tetracycline penicillin is very cheap. Average cost of 250g of penicillin is less than 15 dollars, but same amount of cephalosporin costs more than 50 dollars. Also penicillin is relatively non-toxic and has excellent tissue penetration.

Actually the inventor of penicillin had appropriate idea, but it was invented unintentionally. Also, it was invented by one people, but it was improved by many people. The idea of inventor was inventing new drug that would kill bacteria. Before the invention of penicillin, people already noticed that bacteria cause lots of disease and infection. But they didn’t know how to inhibit or kill the bacteria. Many medical researchers started to research and experiment and some of them finally got what kills bacteria by chance.

In this unit I noticed that in inventing something, you need luck besides knowledge and skill. Usually lots of inventions were invented on purpose with correct process. But some inventions like penicillin were invented accidentally. Also, I realized that one great invention could improve people’s life style and save people. Because of penicillin lots of people had been cured during World War Two. For the last I realized that inventions could be invented by people who are not extremely smart. With some knowledge and idea everyone can make something new.