Word: bacterias
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...strep-polio axis-somehow, in ways no doctor understands, streptococcus plays a malignant part in infantile paralysis. (A coccus is a round bacterium large enough to be seen with an ordinary microscope. A virus is so small it can be seen only with an electron microscope, has some bacteria-like and some protein-like qualities-no one knows for sure whether it is living matter or a chemical...
...develops a network of very fine branches, *called "mycelium," which secrete penicillin. If the delicate mycelium breaks, production of penicillin stops. Temperature must be kept at 24°C. Worst of all hazards is contamination. The sugary bath in which the mold grows is an ideal medium for bacteria; if any get in, they destroy all penicillin present in three hours. And when all these hazards are survived, the yield is fantastically small. The broth from which powdered penicillin is extracted contains only two to six thousandths of 1% of pure penicillin...
Next year what Dr. Fleming knew about the mold's bacteria-baiting by-product appeared in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology. He had found out that the mold was some kind of Penicillium (from the Latin for pencil-the shape of the magnified mold). He named its byproduct penicillin...
...went to work immediately in St. Mary's pathology laboratory under Sir Almroth Wright, now 83, pioneer in vaccine therapy and grand old man of British Medicine. Sir Almroth whetted young Fleming's interest in the mysterious destruction of bacteria by white blood corpuscles and the problem of antiseptics. As a captain in the medical corps in France during World War I, Dr. Fleming noticed that the antiseptics then in use (chiefly Carrel-Dakin's solution) hurt the white blood corpuscles even more than they hurt bacteria. In some cases the antiseptics promoted infection by destroying...
Guiding Idea. One idea ran through all his work: he would look for some naturally occurring bacteria-fighter (new term: antibiotic substance) that would not harm animal tissue. The first antibiotic Dr. Fleming found was lysozyme. It occurs in tears and egg white, can dissolve some bacteria, most of them harmless. That was in 1922-six years before the day when he first saw and grasped the meaning of the sterile ring around the penicillium mold...