Alexander Fleming and the discovery of antibiotic

Alexander Fleming and the discovery of antibiotic

He was a gardener's son who later became a Lord, thanks to the blessed almost drowning of Winston Churchill, who was 8 when he fell into a well. Alexander Fleming was 10 years old, and the son of Winston Churchill’s father's gardener when he saved Winston Churchill, by pulling him out of the well.

Lord Churchill called his father and said: “My son's life is priceless. Ask for anything and I will give it to you, if you want a house I will give you a house.” “I don't need a house, I was born here, my father was born here, my grandmother was the first one to work here. I need to be able to fulfil my son’s wish. I have four children, three will be labourers, they have no interests, but ever since Alexander was very small says he wants to be a doctor and researcher. I don't have the means at all to fulfil his wish.” Lord Churchill said: “Then he will be, if he has the ability. There will be no problem due to lack of money.” Alexander graduated in medicine and thanks to his humbleness he discovered penicillin.

Lord Churchill offered him any room in his mansion and Alexander said no. (Alexander himself gave this account at the Servidor do Estado Hospital, at Sacadura Cabral Street, in 1951.). “A place under the staircase is all I need. There is enough space there to set up a laboratory.” Luckily it was a very humid place. And while he was carrying out experiments with culture plates, a fungus that loves humidity, the penicilium notatum, destroyed one of those culture plates. As he was a researcher, instead of throwing the spoiled culture away, he wondered why that halo of destruction had appeared.. He found the fungus and discovered that this fungus discharged a substance, penicillin. So he started to use this antibiotic in horses at the Jockey Club in London, and in cows with some infectious disease at neighbouring farms.

One day the Royal Air Force Commander came to fetch him to apply penicillin to Winston Churchill who was dying in North Africa. Winston Churchill had gone there to give General Montgomery moral support because he was being defeated by Marshal Rommel, Hitler's desert fox. There he caught double pneumonia, there were no resources, and practically no hope for him.

Both Alexander Fleming and the Royal Air Force commander crossed over Europe on their own, passing over areas occupied by Germans, at high altitudes, and arrived in time to apply penicillin to Churchill. But then he said quite simply to the Royal Air Force commander: “But Churchill of all people will have to be the first human being to have a penicillin injection! What? Churchill, our Prime Minister?!” And the answer came: “It is all or nothing. His case is a hopeless one.” And in this was he saved Winston Churchill for the second time, the first was in the well, that resulted in him studying medicine