What Do You Know About Penicillin?

Penicillin created much excitement and became known very quickly. Hardly any weapon against disease made such an impact. It was as if suddenly the world became aware of a “miracle”, happening before its eyes.

Penicillin is not one of the man’s miracles created by a genius in a laboratory. It is a miracle of nature. Penicillin is the name given to a powerful substance which fights bacteria and is developed by certain moulds. It is an “antibiotic”, meaning a substance produced a living organism. It acts upon another harmful bacteria.

The whole idea of antibiotics is not new. As back as in the year 1877, antibiotic action was discovered by Louis Pasteur and various antibiotic substances were used to create infections. The moulds, in fact and fungi were used to treat infection. It was used many years ago, but no one knows what it was!

Sir Alexander Fleming, in the year 1928, was the one to describe and name this strange substance as “Penicillin”. It was discovered almost by accident, but it soon became a subject of thorough study. It was noticed that certain moulds produced this substance which had a powerful and destructive effect on many of the common bacteria. This bacteria infect man, while it had no effect on many other.

Further discoveries about Penicillin were very important. It did not have powerful effect against bacteria or a very harmful effect on human cells. This was important because other antiseptics in use had a greater effect on human cells than they did effect the harmful bacteria!

Penicillin is very selective in its action. This means that it has a powerful effect on some bacteria and no effect on others. It is not an all-round drug used to kill any kind of bacteria as commonly believed by some people.

Penicillin has three kinds of effects on bacteria. It is bacteriostatic which means it stop the growth of bacteria. It is “bactericidal” meaning thereby it kills bacteria. And in some cases it even dissolves many bacteria altogether.