# Talk:History of penicillin

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 January 2019 and 10 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Swinkleman, RandyGreeves. Peer reviewers: RFoley2, Clandis0217, Mghgd.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:38, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Most info here comes from Kevin Brown's book, but it seemed silly to put it as reference for almost every paragraph. Perhaps there is a better way?DanielDemaret 17:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

on the timeline here, it is shown as 1929, but in the penicillin article, it's 1928. Penicillin#History

  
    
      
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The 1961 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica vol.9 p.371 Title: Fleming, Sir Alexander - states that his discovery of the antibacterial powers of the mold from which penicillin is derived was made in 1928 and was a "triumph of accident and shrewd observation." The entry goes on to state that he published his results in the Journal of Experimental Pathology in 1929.  Spyglasses 10:00, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

A Romanian bacteriologist, Victor Babes (1854-1926) has also been credited with the discovery of penicillin, before Fleming. I don't have an online reference though... 160.39.48.173 (talk) 20:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

following the timeline here I have read now the personal Articles of John Tyndall and Joseph Lister. In both Articles the Relationship to this Events is not mentioned with a word. -- Hartmann Schedel (talk) 18:55, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

According to a PBS program on this subject, Fleming did not advocate treating humans directly with penicillin, because he was one of the doctors who had shown the the use of the older antiseptics on war woulds did more harm than good.  This is an important point, because it indicates that he did not discover it as a medicine.  
This is a case, like the recent CCD Nobel prize, where the main credit went to the basic researcher rather than the one who found the important application of the discovery.
David R. Ingham (talk) 22:12, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I think David R. Ingham or PBS misunderstood Fleming's concern.  Yes, he (and others of his time) thought it unlikely that an chemical could be both antibacterial and non-toxic.  Although Paul Ehrlich's arsphenamine was known, it was also difficult to use and not non-toxic.  It wasn't until after Prontosil and sulfanilamide were discovered that the idea of safe and effective antibiotic therapy was widely accepted.  Nevertheless, Fleming did do what we today would call PK and drug stability tests, with very discouraging results.  It was the latter that likely discouraged him from testing penicillin in a challenge test. Reference: Macfarlane, G. "Alexander Fleming in Fact and Fantasy"  New Scientist Mar 1, 1984, pp. 26-28.  --Zeamays (talk) 20:04, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Milton Wainwright, Miracle Cure: The Story of Antibiotics, Blackwell, (1990), page 35, mentions Frederick S Dennis.  As I recall from having dug out the original papers, Dennis was a surgeon or dentist who presented his study of Penicillium molds at a scientific meeting and included a display of test tubes with various organisms and results showing inhibition in the presence of P. molds. 
Wainwright also mentions some early Russian claims but I have never been able to locate the source documents (even with the help of a Russian colleague in Moscow):
Polotebnov, Manessien, 1872 (Russia)
Lebedinskii, 1877 (Russia)
Tartakovskii, 1904 (Russia) AdderUser (talk) 20:04, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The article presents a long list of people observing bacterial growth being inhibited by molds and antedotes about ancient societies using mold to treat infection.  But there is not evidence presented that any of this has anything to do with penicillin.  
Not all molds produce penicillin. Not even all penicillium strains do.  If they do demonstrate antibacterial activity, it is in many cases due to antimicrobial substances other than penicillin.  And the examples of ancient treatments of infection using mold do not provide any evidence of efficacy to back up the claim that the molds actually had antibacterial activity.  Phlebotomy was used to treat all manner of illness for over a millenium, and we all know that it doesn't do anything. 
Its an interesting history, but none of the information in the article persuasively demonstrates that Fleming was not the first to demonstrate the antibacterial activity of what is now known as penicillin.  Formerly 98 (talk) 02:14, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
Penicillin is like ANY invention -- once it has been discovered, you can point to a million other bits of prior art and say, Tut tut, it was OBVIOUS.  That's what the Patent Office tries to do to you when you apply for a patent; they just Google for the words you use to describe your invention/discovery, and off they go.  I have a special feeling for Dr Fleming and his discovery, since I discovered a cure for bladder infections that's the next thing after penicillin.  But this "obviousness" thing is the bane of patenting nowadays; it's the principal test the USPTO employs, as I understand it.  This article on History of Penicillin is a great example reaching back to the days before we even knew about microbes, much less had seen them.  It's almost but not quite as bad as having to deal with the cranberry people, with the UTIs.  Richard8081 (talk) 20:40, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. How about this replacement?
"but he was not the first to use its properties in medicine. " 
might be replaced with 
"he may not have been the first to use its properties in medicine. This is a list of prior incidents similar cases, although there is no conclusive evidence that the same substance was used."
There are many articles suggesting that he may not have used it first. This way, that issue is addressed, at least. "
Star Lord  -   星爵 (talk) 11:58, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

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The situation described in the outline reads like a variation of the following incident described in Paul de Kruif's 1926 Microbe Hunters: 
"He had not the precise methods of growing microbes pure—it took the patience of Koch to devise such things—and one day to his disgust, Pasteur observed that a bottle of boiled urine in which he had planted anthrax bacilli was swarming with unbidden guests, contaminating microbes of the air that had sneaked in. The following morning he observed that there were no anthrax germs left at all; they had been completely choked out by the bacilli from the air.
At once Pasteur jumped to a fine idea: “If the harmless bugs from the air choke out the anthrax bacilli in the bottle, they will do it in the body too! It is a kind of dog-eat-dog!” shouted Pasteur, and at once he put Roux and Chamberland to work on the fantastic experiment of giving guinea-pigs anthrax and then shooting doses of billions of harmless microbes into them—beneficent germs which were to chase the anthrax bacilli round the body and devour them—they were to be like the mongoose which kills cobras. . .
Pasteur gravely announced: “That there were high hopes for the cure of disease from this experiment,” but that is the last you hear of it, for Pasteur was never a man to give the world of science the benefit of studying his failures."
Is Pasteur's supposed "discovery" of penicillin a mangling/misunderstanding of this incident?  
It is clear that in this incident had nothing to do with mold and based on Kruif's timeline it appears to be in the right time.--Professor Phantasm (talk) 23:38, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for this addition, Swinkleman.  To hopefully make it a little clearer, I've re-worded to 

In the early stages of penicillin research, most species of Penicillium were generally referred to as Penicillium glaucum, so we cannot identify the actual strains used. Thus, it is difficult to tell whether it was really penicillin preventing bacterial growth. 
Can you please confirm whether this preserves the intended meaning?  I can't read the cited source as it is not in English. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 01:22, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes, thank you for the edit. Adrian J. Hunter  I'll see if I can fix the source.Swinkleman (talk) 18:50, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Source url fixed Swinkleman (talk) 19:03, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

In the next few weeks I will be adding a lot of information about the manufacturing process of penicillin and its evolution over time.RandyGreeves (talk) 15:49, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
I am about to add to the First Isolation and successful treatment section Swinkleman (talk) 15:24, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I added a new section about penicillin resistance. Antibiotic resistance is a new problem that arose with the use of penicillin.
I moved a sentence from Stabilization and mass production to this section, and added some info to the section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Swinkleman (talk • contribs) 17:32, 12 April 2019 (UTC) 

Hi, I want to note that the phrase "John Parkinson, King's Herbarian, who advocated the use of mold in his book on pharmacology." was referenced using a secondary paper from "Kate Gould, Antibiotics: from prehistory to the present day, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Volume 71, Issue 3, March 2016, Pages 572–575, https://doi.org/10.1093/jac/dkv484". I revised the online version of the original book here "https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/256142#page/13/mode/1up", and I couldn't find the claim or the original "advocation" of John Parkinson. If someone has better research skills, please edit the sentence because it doesn't seem to be reliable. Thank you.
Mycoandres (talk) 00:11, 28 February 2022 (UTC)Mycoandres

Very good information. It seems that Parkinson did not specifically mention moulds as medicinal; but later (modern) inferences indicate that some medicinal practices he described were based on Penicillium mould. For early description, see Cranch, 1943, JAMA. Chhandama (talk) 05:31, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
However, neither are primary sources who back-up the claims. I strongly suggest delete or add a tag of warning, because none of that "In England in 1640, the idea of using mould as a form of medical treatment was recorded by apothecaries such as the botanist John Parkinson, who documented the use of moulds to treat infections in his book on pharmacology. In 17th-century Poland, wet bread was mixed with spider webs (which often contained fungal spores) to treat wounds. The technique was mentioned by Henryk Sienkiewicz in his 1884 novel With Fire and Sword." is real documented history or primary sources. Mycoandres (talk) 23:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
So you looked up the sources and what did they say?
Source: " This theme of the benefit of moulds continued over the years, with references by John Parkinson (1567–1640) (Figure 1) in his book Theatrum Botanicum, published in 1640"
Article: "In England in 1640, the idea of using mould as a form of medical treatment was recorded by apothecaries such as the botanist John Parkinson, who documented the use of moulds to treat infections in his book on pharmacology."
---
Source: "Anyone who reads the Trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz knows, that in the former Poland wounds were treated with bread kneaded with spider's web. And on spider's web, of course, there are plenty of fungal spores, also Penicillium. So antibiotic treatment has been used in our country for centuries"
Article: "In 17th-century Poland, wet bread was mixed with spider webs (which often contained fungal spores) to treat wounds."
---
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:45, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Considering how important is this part of the 12-year-long penicillin epic, the section is surprisingly short, almost shorter than Alexander Fleming#Purification and stabilisation. Could someone with a better knowledge of the subject than me please at least copy everything which is possible from there and add some more details on why it was possible in 1939 to do what Fleming and his colleagues struggled with for years before? Ain92 (talk) 14:54, 7 June 2022 (UTC) PS TIL about "penicillin girls".

I have expanded this section. The reasons though are: (1) Florey was a first rate scientist while Fleming was an ordinary one; (2) he assembled and directed a team of experts on a concerted attack on all aspects of the problem; (3) who persisted until they succeeded. It is worth noting that Fleming and his associates did not struggle "for years" but gave up after just one. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:28, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

This material is not within the scope of this page. Minute details about individual laboratories are not needed for an encyclopedic entry about the history of the over-arching broad topic of penicillin history. It is also a combination of uncited and poorly cited. We do not need a summary of a loosely related book halfway through the page. Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 17:54, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I have just noticed that the single source cited for all of this is a book written by you, the person who edited this content into the page. That is original research and it is unacceptable. Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 17:59, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
agree, and when I reverted the addition it was entirely uncited. Artem.G (talk) 18:00, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Paragraph 7 in this section, about the cantaloupe spores, ends with "The spores may have escaped from the NRRL." I searched the book cited here, Howard Florey, Penicillin and After by Trevor Williams, and I'm not sure that's what it says. This was all I could find in the book (on p. 146):
"Responsibility for the search for more productive mould strains was entrusted to Kenneth Raper, Curator of the Culture Collection at Peoria. Apart from other sources, he was able to enlist the help of the Army Air Command with the result that hundreds of specimens flooded into his laboratory from places as far apart as Calcutta, Chungking, and North Africa. Ironically, the best producer of all, coded NRRL 1951, was cultured from a mouldy melon picked up in a Peoria fruit market. It is tempting to speculate that this derived ultimately from a spore that escaped from the NRRL, much as Fleming’s strain most probably escaped from a laboratory near his own (p. 65)." [Referring to the speculation that Fleming's strain came from La Touche's lab in the NRRL, explained in the "Discovery" section of this article.]
I didn't find anything else on the idea of the spores "escaping," and "it is tempting to speculate" is not corroboration. Is there another source for this, or are we conflating the probable Fleming-La-Touche-contamination with the cantaloupe strain? Halincandenza42 (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:History of penicillin/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Nominator: Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) 03:36, 22 July 2025 (UTC)
Reviewer: MisawaSakura (talk · contribs) 18:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Starting review. MisawaSakura (talk) 18:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Accurate -
Prose -
Discovery to Isolation - There is a 10-year jump, from 1929-1939 between these two sections. Is there anything worth mentioning to cover this gap? If not, it's ok. Once 1939 rolls around, things seem to move quickly. MisawaSakura (talk) 21:21, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Yes, the really was a ten-year gap when nothing happened before Florey and Chain decided to research the result reported in the article. I am glad that this point stick out. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Hey! Understand this is a little old, but this wasn't quite true. While interest did fade, there was research on penicillin in the 1930s before Florey etc. I have added this information. But it feels by trying to make the point of the 10 years stick out, information was missed.Basetornado (talk) 05:24, 24 October 2025 (UTC)
Deep submergence - RE "dropped 100 to 150 bacteria colonies per millilitre to just one"; consider "dropped from 100 to 150 bacteria colonies per millilitre to just one"MisawaSakura (talk) 21:32, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Y Added missing word. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Japan - "Hekiso". Since this is a foreign word, shouldn't it be in italics instead of quotes? MisawaSakura (talk) 21:41, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Y Added {{lang}} template. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
MOS -
Intro - Penicillium notatum is a redir to Penicillium chrysogenum, which in the first sentence clearly says it used to be P. notatum. Combined with the rule of thumb that  redirects should generally be avoided, I think this redir should be fixed, either by piping notatum to chrysogenum in the intro or changing the link to go directly to Penicillium chrysogenum. MisawaSakura (talk) 20:25, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Y I am not aware of a guideline that says that redirects should be avoided. Can you point me to it? Our guideline says Piping links solely to avoid redirects is generally a time-wasting exercise that can actually be detrimental. (WP:NOTBROKEN) I have changed the link in the lead to Penicillium chrysogenum. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:36, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any written guideline saying avoid them. I also don't recall where I picked up this idea. Probably some disussion somewhere in my early days. While a redir isn't a broken thing, I don't agree with the notion it could be detrimental; and it seems to me to be more efficient to directly link. At any rate, thanks for changing it. MisawaSakura (talk) 20:57, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
It becomes detrimental if the redirect becomes an article in its own right. If the redirect is used, then there is no problem. But if people have gone through piping it, then you have to check every single link to the original article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:30, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Early evidence - does this: "(The term antibiosis, meaning 'against life', was adopted as antibiotic by American biologist and later Nobel laureate Selman Waksman in 1947.[14])" need to be in parens? MisawaSakura (talk) 20:32, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Y Probably because it was out of chronological order. Removed the parentheses. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:40, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Broad - yes. MisawaSakura (talk) 22:07, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Neutral - yes MisawaSakura (talk) 22:07, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Stable - yes MisawaSakura (talk) 22:07, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Images - all have free tags and I see no problems. MisawaSakura (talk) 19:22, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Sources - high quality, mostly academic, consistently formatted MisawaSakura (talk) 20:01, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Copyvio - Earwig's says violation unlikely and its two biggest hits are blockquotes. If I don't come back to this it means I didn't find any problems while going through the article. MisawaSakura (talk) 19:01, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Just a curiosity question. Color photos were rare in 1943. Do you know if the photo of Fleming was taken in color or was it later colorized? MisawaSakura (talk) 20:59, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
The colour is original. Although uncommon, the IWM has a large collection of colour images from World War II. (see [4]) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:39, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
Very interesting and detailed article!. I'm in no way a FA expert but in my humble opinion this is FA material. Great job! MisawaSakura (talk) 22:07, 4 October 2025 (UTC)