Nancy Lee Cunningham, age 10, of Newport News, Virginia, for her question:
How do they make penicillin?
The first doses of penicillin were very hard to come by, and the original research¬ers could not produce nearly enough. While these early doses helped a few people and proved the value of the new wonder drug, it was up to medical scientists to find newer, better ways of producing the large quantities needed by the world's population.
Penicillin tells a wondrous story of modern medical research the life saving science that cures so many of our serious illnesses in a jiffy and adds years to our lives. This story began by accident in a London laboratory, way back in the year 1928. The accident was a breeze that entered an open window and wafted over some of the shallow dishes that researchers use to cultivate germs in special soupy broths. They cultivate germs and test them later to find out what destroys them and especially, what destroys them without harming human bodies. That accidental breeze just happened to be carrying the spores of a certain mold. There are countless different mold plants and zillions of their spores float around us in the ordinary air. The spores of one very special mold just happened to land on a dish of germ culture.
The mold thrived and grew. Dr. Alexander Fleming, the researcher, noticed it and also noticed that the disease germs around the mold were being destroyed. Something in the newly found mold was a born germ killer. The mold was carefully cultivated and tested. It was found to be the mortal enemy of pneumonia germs, and it did not harm human cells. Growing small quantities of the mold was slow and patient work. Lots of laboratories cultivated samples to speed up the process, but for years the penicillin wonder drug was too scarce for general use.
In the 1940's, researchers isolated the chemical germ killer that the penicillin mold oozes into its broth. American researchers later created this vital penicillin chemical in the laboratory. The process of making the synthetic drug is very expensive and at present we let the penicillin mold make it for us. Scientists have concentrated on finding better strains of the mold, richer broths to feed it and equipment to culti¬vate it in large quantities. They now use a penicillin strain that yields 5,000 times more than the original mold.
The little bottles and shallow pans used to make the first penicillin are outmoded. The job is done by a deep culture process. A deep tank is filled with perhaps 15,000 gallons of soupy culture for the molds. The brew is stirred and mixed with jets of air and kept at the right temperature. The human helpers wear masks and every care is taken to keep the process pure and clean. The molds thrive and multiply, oozing out their penicillin chemical. Later this is sifted and separated from the brew and dried to make pure penicillin powder.
Penicillin is an antibiotic, a medicine that works by using friendly organisms to destroy enemy germs. Its discovery began the antibiotic age of medicine. When sprin¬kled on open wounds, it speeds up healing by destroying bacteria that cause infections. It can be injected into the blood or given in pill form. But penicillin cannot cure all our bacterial diseases. Other antibiotics have been found to wipe out some of the germs it misses; but not all of them. Medical science still needs researchers to find other antibiotics to fight against many germs that still plague us.