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Turns out the magic bullet during WWII wasn't what it sounds [bullet onstage]

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like. Instead, one of the major technological advances that likely made

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an Allied victory possible was a fungus: penicillin. Invented, or rather [bullet pulls mushroom out of hat]

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accidentally discovered, by Alexander Fleming in 1928, penicillin was the first [penicillin discovered]

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antibiotic on the market capable of killing other disease-causing

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microorganisms. It was a great day for humanity and a bad day for microorganisms.

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Fleming published his work, but he wasn't able to produce penicillin in mass [microorganisms despair]

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quantities. So the scientific world mostly forgot about his discovery... yeah,

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great going there, guys. Then, World War II came along and people started [World War II photos]

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thinking it would be mighty nice if they had some way to fight infection on the

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battlefield. Well, British scientists picked up Fleming's research and came up [scientists recreate penicillin]

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with a penicillin injection, but they weren't able to produce it on a large

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enough scale for it to make a difference. So, British scientists snuck some of the

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wonder mold over to America to take advantage of America's larger laboratory [mold goes west]

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infrastructure to get Allied production of penicillin up and running. With a little

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poking and prodding by the government, pharmaceutical companies eventually

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decided to do their part, and penicillin production skyrocketed from 21 billion

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units in 1943 to 1663 billion units in 1944, to over 6 trillion units in 1945. And [penicillin growth chart]

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just like, that a miracle drug flooded the market. Yes, it was a flood of mold...

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but in this case, the mold was a good thing. The impact of penicillin on the

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war and the world can't be overstated. In one fell swoop, thousands of battlefield [penicillin ads]

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infections were stopped in their tracks, and since, you know, like the dawn of

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time, people have been dying of infections in one way or another that we

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don't even pay attention to today. One little scrape that got infected killed

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the healthiest people, and just imagine how many soldiers died over the century [people dying of infection]

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from wounds. Well, don't imagine their infected wounds, though. That's just too

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gross. Some estimate that penicillin saved 3,000 lives at the Battle of Normandy

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alone. Its super antibiotic powers kept soldiers from dying from the evils of [Normandy picture]

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gangrene, which is an infection that basically rots you to

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death. Yep, feel free to gag now. In the end, maybe it wasn't entirely fair to [gangrene diagram... look away]

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call penicillin World War II's magic bullet. It was more like the magic anti-

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bullet-related-infection drug, but that's less catchy. [penicillin speaks]

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