It truly amazes me, a mere accident has revolutionised modern medicine practically saving millions of lives. The idea of a mould killing bacteria has intrigued me and possible must had been for Fleming. He was able to handle awful diseases and wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty such as dealing with staphylococcus. This must be why he is so untidy all the time leaving he’s workstation as a mess but everything worked out in the end.
And being the untidy person he is, he left some staphylococcus bacteria lying around in a glass panel. Some have died, some were living life to the fullest. That is what must have instigated him, the curiosity and mystery of life and death of his samples. He studied these samples and came up with various hypothesis but evently came down to one. Mould.
It mould that killed the bacteria. He must have suggest that a type of fungus must have contaminated the samples, leading to the extermination of the staphylococcus samples. By studying that, he discover figured it was penicillium.
He expressed initial optimism that penicillin would be a useful disinfectant, because of its high potency and minimal toxicity in comparison others. Fleming was not recognised at all hence, his discoveries weren’t given any attention. Although ten years have passed, Fleming has conducted countless experiments on penicillin’s response to heat and pH allowing the increase the stability of the compound. Of course I was curious of these findings and developed a team to further study these discoveries. I realised that science had reached a point where a team of specialists was needed – the job was too big for one person. We have been working day and night at the university and also the weekends but eventually we had a breakthrew. The penicillin had satisfied the experiment rendering it for human use and potentially saving million of lives during the world war.
After everything was settled, I packed up my bags and headed to North Africa where most of the wounded soldiers had been with the penicillin. The field hospital is stuffy and the air has a weary feeling. The dividers are scratched in places from the several trolleys that have bumped into them. The doors are expansive blue plastic signs with multiple wounded soldiers that lie ahead.
Along the wounded soldiers, under the blinking fluorescent light, there was a corpse, utterly still. He has recently died, and at first glance the cause isn’t apparent but further inspection showed that he died of an infection. From his clothing he was one of the soldiers who fought on the frontline. If I had come earlier, he would’ve been alive. Among the dead soldiers, many have lose faith and prepared to die as their limbs swelled to triple its size.
They had usually either had to pray and wait for the infection to go away or to simply cut it off. Both weren’t idea and luckily I had brought a great quantity of the antibiotic. It took my day and night and our team have treated each soldiers, We would first clean it of any mucus and scabs and stitch the wounds up. I also advised the physicians that each person should be given penicillin. Although it will take days to work, the atmosphere of the war tent grew better.
I sat down with a cup of water in my hand as I wiped my head with my shirt. This will help these soldiers go home, the soldiers who thought for our nations, will go home to their loved ones.
