Sloppiness Saved Millions of Lives
Today, Alexander Fleming (1881 – 1955) is rightly remembered as one of the most brilliant minds in the history of science. However, for much of his career, Fleming had been an unprepossessing Scottish doctor, pharmacologist, and microbiologist. There was not much in his decades-long career, before 1928, to indicate that he would revolutionize medicine. Until that year, Fleming’s biggest career accomplishment had to do with research on enzymes. But in 1928, he discovered penicillin, the antibiotic that would revolutionize medical care. Because of that discovery, untold millions of lives have been saved from fatal bacterial infections. And it all happened because Fleming had been a slob.
Alexander Fleming’s life was marked by lucky breaks and twists of fate. Born in Scotland, he moved to London, where he graduated high school before getting a job in a shipping office. That might have become his career, but an uncle died four years later, and left Fleming an inheritance that allowed him to go to medical school. He planned on becoming a surgeon, but he did not end up on that career path because, of all things, Fleming was good with a rifle.
While serving in a reserve regiment, Fleming’s superiors discovered that he was a great marksman. To become a surgeon, he would have had to leave his medical school and move away. That would have entailed leaving his unit, and Fleming’s commanding officer did not want to lose his promising crack shot reservist. So he introduced Fleming to a prominent researcher and immunologist, who convinced him to become a researcher instead.
Fleming served in the Army Medical Corp during WW1, and he observed the deaths of many soldiers from uncontrollable infections. At the time, antiseptics were used to fight infections, but they often did more harm than good. Fleming conducted research, which showed that antiseptics did nothing to stop the proliferation of anaerobic bacteria in deep wounds. Although his research was initially rejected, Fleming plugged on.
One day in 1922, while infected with a cold, he transferred some of his snot to a Petri dish. Fleming was a slob, with sloppy lab practices, so he put the Petri dish on his cluttered desk, then forgot about it for a few weeks. When he finally remembered and examined it, the Petri dish was full of bacterial colonies. However, the microscope revealed that one area of snot was free of bacteria. Further examination revealed that it was due to the presence of an enzyme, which he called lysozyme, which had some antimicrobial properties. That laid the groundwork for his discovery of penicillin.
In 1928, still a laboratory slob, Fleming left another uncovered Petri dish next to an open window, where it became contaminated with fungus spores. When he examined it under the microscope, Fleming discovered that the bacteria near the fungus were dying. He managed to isolate the fungus, and discovered that it was effective against numerous pathogens that caused diseases such as meningitis, pneumonia, diphtheria, gonorrhea, scarlet fever, and many more. Thus, penicillin was discovered. As Fleming put it: “I did not discover penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident“.