Through Any Window

As a Scottish farm boy Alexander Fleming learned to closely

observe the natural world . He was also a crack rifle shot

in the London Scottish Regiment. So valuable was he  

that his captain urged him to switch from surgery to 

microbiology so he could remain nearby at St. Mary’s 

College. Where,  in 1921, his great legacy to science

innocuously flew in an open window at the school.

Perspicacious Fleming found that bacteria floating free

had contaminated one of the culture plates in his lab. 

But nasal mucus, had somehow stopped its growth. He

hastened to the Royal Society to spread the news of 

an antibiotic, lyzosyme, that might save millions from

the scourge of disease, killer for centuries. Instead 

Fleming was ignored by the men of British science.

In 1928, returning home from a Scottish holiday,

he examined a petri dish containing staphylococcus,

the bacteria causing strep throat, scarlet and rheumatic

fevers, meningitis, diphtheria, necrotizing fasciitis. On

the edge of this sample he noted a mold that 

seemingly resisted the killer bacteria. Once more 

Fleming took his discovery, named penicillin, to 

the 1941 Congress on Microbiology, again to be ignored by 

peers. But Fleming inspired others to purify the mold.

The wonder of penicillin spread fast during WW II. It

reduced deaths by anywhere from 12-15 percent.

Sir Alex’s salvation quiet revolution in a petri dish

came fluttering in the window, bringing a Nobel Prize.