Certain kinds of blue mold have long been used in making cheese to give distinctive qualities and flavors. Gorgonzola cheese from Italy, and Stilton from England, are also mold-ripened. Our brown, salty soy sauce borrowed from China is prepared by a long slow fermentation of soy beans and rice with a mold. Of the multitude of species of mold-like fungi, some cause infections and diseases in animals and man. Two of our skin diseases, more aggravating than dangerous, are ringworm and athlete's foot.
Chickens eating moldy grain get a mold infection of their air sacs.
In winter, fish are often killed by a water mold that produces patches of gray fuzz on their skins or gills. One of the most revolutionary medical discoveries of all time was made in 1938 by Dr. Alexander Fleming of England. It started when one of the culture plates on which he was growing pathogenic bacteria was accidentally contaminated with a spot of blue mold. He noticed that the mold had created a bacteria-free ring around itself and was shrewd enough to realize what it meant. That was the origin of the antibiotic drug, penicillin.