U.S. History 1877-Present 9.7: The Technology of War–Penicillin
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If someone told you to rub mold on an infection, you'd probably look at them like they had a second head. Well, the world is a strange place, and one particular kind of fungus has actually saved a lot of lives.
| Language | English Language |
| U.S. History | U.S. History 1877-Present |
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microorganisms. It was a great day for humanity and a bad day for microorganisms.
Fleming published his work, but he wasn't able to produce penicillin in mass [microorganisms despair]
quantities. So the scientific world mostly forgot about his discovery... yeah,
great going there, guys. Then, World War II came along and people started [World War II photos]
thinking it would be mighty nice if they had some way to fight infection on the
battlefield. Well, British scientists picked up Fleming's research and came up [scientists recreate penicillin]
with a penicillin injection, but they weren't able to produce it on a large
enough scale for it to make a difference. So, British scientists snuck some of the
wonder mold over to America to take advantage of America's larger laboratory [mold goes west]
infrastructure to get Allied production of penicillin up and running. With a little
poking and prodding by the government, pharmaceutical companies eventually
decided to do their part, and penicillin production skyrocketed from 21 billion
units in 1943 to 1663 billion units in 1944, to over 6 trillion units in 1945. And [penicillin growth chart]
just like, that a miracle drug flooded the market. Yes, it was a flood of mold...
but in this case, the mold was a good thing. The impact of penicillin on the
war and the world can't be overstated. In one fell swoop, thousands of battlefield [penicillin ads]
infections were stopped in their tracks, and since, you know, like the dawn of
time, people have been dying of infections in one way or another that we
don't even pay attention to today. One little scrape that got infected killed
the healthiest people, and just imagine how many soldiers died over the century [people dying of infection]
from wounds. Well, don't imagine their infected wounds, though. That's just too
gross. Some estimate that penicillin saved 3,000 lives at the Battle of Normandy
alone. Its super antibiotic powers kept soldiers from dying from the evils of [Normandy picture]
gangrene, which is an infection that basically rots you to
death. Yep, feel free to gag now. In the end, maybe it wasn't entirely fair to [gangrene diagram... look away]
call penicillin World War II's magic bullet. It was more like the magic anti-
bullet-related-infection drug, but that's less catchy. [penicillin speaks]