#innovative_classes_gonda #innovative_instagram_post #innovative_minds Bacterial infections that had been killing people previously were cured In the late 1930’s in Oxford, Howard Florey organized a research team, among them Ernst Chain, to produce a stable penicillin. After experiments in mice, the team accumulated enough stable penicillin to permit trials on people with normally fatal bacterial infections. A 43-year old police officer, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin on 12 February, 1941. Within 24 hours, Albert Alexander's temperature had dropped and the infection had begun to heal. But then the penicillin ran short. The team extracted penicillin from their patient’s urine to reuse it but after five days there was no more. Sadly, Albert Alexander got worse again and died in March. The stories normally have it that Albert Alexander had scratched his face on a rose bush, the wound had become infected and the infection had spread. In fact, there is no evidence for the rose thorn story according to University of OxfordInstead, there is evidence that he was injured when a bomb struck a police station and the injuries developed a life-threatening infection. However the injury was caused, he made a major contribution to the development of penicillin that have saved millions of lives. Better results followed with other patients though and soon there were plans to make penicillin available for British troops on the battlefield. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain shared the Nobel Prize with Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin in 1928. In his Nobel Lecture in 1945, Fleming made a warning concerning resistant microorganisms. Courtesy-Nobel Prize Facebook page (text and image both) (at Innovative Classes)
