History of penicillin

Table columns:
Year
Location
Descriptions

Table rows:
cells: Ancient times
Egypt, Greece & India
Many ancient cultures, including the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and in ancient India, already used moulds and other plants to treat infection.[1] This worked because some moulds produce antibiotic substances. However, they could not identify or isolate the active component in the moulds.
cells: "traditional"
Russia
Russian peasants used warm soil as treatment for infected wounds.[2]
cells: c. 150 BC
Sri Lanka
Soldiers in the army of king Dutugemunu (161–137 BC) are recorded to have stored oil cakes (a traditional Sri Lankan sweetmeat) for long periods in their hearth lofts before embarking on their campaigns, in order to make a poultice of the cakes to treat wounds.[citation needed] It is assumed that the oil cakes served the dual functions of desiccant and antibacterial.[clarification needed]
cells: 1600s
Poland
Wet bread was mixed with spider webs (containing spores) to treat wounds. The technique was mentioned by Henryk Sienkiewicz in his 1884 book With Fire and Sword.
cells: 1640
England
The idea of using mould as a form of treatment was recorded by apothecaries, such as John Parkinson, King's Herbarian, who advocated the use of mould in his book on pharmacology.[citation needed]
cells: 1870
United Kingdom
Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, who started out at St. Mary's Hospital 1852–1858 and as lecturer there 1854–1862 observed that culture fluid covered with mould would produce no bacteria.
cells: 1871
United Kingdom
Burdon-Sanderson's discovery prompted Joseph Lister, an English surgeon and the father of modern antisepsis to investigate that urine samples contaminated with mould did not allow the growth of bacteria. He also described the antibacterial action on human tissue of what he called Penicillium glaucum.[3] A nurse at King's College Hospital whose wounds did not respond to any antiseptic, was then given another substance that cured her, and Lister's registrar informed her that it was called Penicillium.
cells: 1874
United Kingdom
William Roberts observed that bacterial contamination is generally absent in cultures of the mould Penicillium glaucum.
cells: 1875
United Kingdom
John Tyndall followed up on Burdon-Sanderson's work and demonstrated to the Royal Society the antibacterial action of the Penicillium fungus.[4]
cells: 1875
Bacillus anthracis was shown to cause anthrax. This was the first demonstration that a specific bacterium caused a specific disease.
cells: 1877
France
Louis Pasteur and Jules Francois Joubert observed that cultures of the anthrax bacilli, when contaminated with moulds, became inhibited. Some references say that Pasteur identified the strain as Penicillium notatum.[citation needed]
cells: 1887
France
Garré found similar results.
cells: 1895
Italy
Vincenzo Tiberio, physician of the University of Naples published a research about a mould in a water well in Arzano, Italy that had an antibacterial action.[5][6][7][8]
cells: 1897
France
Ernest Duchesne at École du Service de Santé Militaire in Lyon independently discovered healing properties of a Penicillium glaucum mould, even curing infected guinea pigs of typhoid. He published a dissertation[9][10][11] in 1897 but this was ignored by the Institut Pasteur. However Duchesne was himself using a discovery made by Arab stable boys, who were using moulds to cure sores on horses. He did not claim that the mould contained any antibacterial substance, only that the mould somehow protected the animals. Duchesne cured typhoid, but the penicillin isolated by Fleming does not cure typhoid. Duchesne injected a mould with the fungus Penicillium glaucum. In contrast, Fleming isolated the substance penicillin from the mould Penicillium notatum. The term Penicillium glaucum was used as a catch-all phrase at the time for different fungi, but not for Penicillium notatum and the mould was unfortunately not preserved, which makes it impossible to be certain today which fungus might have been responsible for the cure, and consequently, even less certain which substance was responsible.
cells: 1920
Belgium
Andre Gratia and Sara Dath observed a fungal contamination in one of their Staphylococcus aureus cultures that was inhibiting the growth of the bacterium. They identified this as a species of Penicillium and presented their observations as a paper. There was little attention to this paper.
cells: 1923
Costa Rica
An Institut Pasteur scientist, Costa Rican Clodomiro Picado Twight recorded the antibiotic effect of Penicillium.
cells: 1928
United Kingdom
Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming noticed a halo of inhibition of bacterial growth around a contaminant blue-green mould on a Staphylococcus plate culture. He concluded that the mould was releasing a substance that was inhibiting bacterial growth. He grew a pure culture of the mould and discovered that it was Penicillium notatum. With help from a chemist, he concentrated what he later named "penicillin". During the next twelve years, he grew and distributed the original mould, unsuccessfully trying to get help from any chemist that had enough skill to make a stable form of it, for mass production.
cells: 1930
United Kingdom
Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Royal Infirmary in Sheffield, attempted to treat sycosis (eruptions in beard follicles) with penicillin but was unsuccessful, probably because the drug did not penetrate deep enough. Moving on to ophthalmia neonatorum, a gonococcal infection in babies, he achieved the first cure on 25 November 1930. He cured four patients (one adult, the others babies) of eye infections, although a fifth patient was not so lucky.[12]
cells: 1938
United Kingdom
In Oxford, Howard Walter Florey organized his large and very skilled biochemical research team, notable among them Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley, to undertake innovative work to produce a stable penicillin.
cells: 1941–1943
USA
Peoria, Illinois: Moyer, Coghill and Raper at the USDA Northern Regional Research Laboratory (NRRL) developed methods for industrialized penicillin production and isolated higher-yielding strains of the Penicillium fungus.[13][14] In December, 1942 survivors of the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston were the first burn patients to be successfully treated with penicillin.[15]
cells: 1941–1944
USA
Brooklyn, New York: Jasper H. Kane and other Pfizer scientists developed the practical, deep-tank fermentation method for production of large quantities of pharmaceutical-grade penicillin.[16]
cells: 1945
United Kingdom
Oxford: Using X-ray crystallographic analysis, Dorothy Hodgkin elucidated the correct chemical structure of penicillin.[17]
cells: 1952
Austria
Kundl, Tyrol: Hans Margreiter and Ernst Brandl of Biochemie (now Sandoz) developed the first acid-stable penicillin for oral administration, Penicillin V.[18]
cells: 1957
USA
Chemist John C. Sheehan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) completed the first chemical synthesis of penicillin in 1957.[19]

Questions about this table:
originalText: who was the first person to use penicillin
answer: answerTexts: Cecil George Paine