The path that this person has traveled is familiar to every scientist - searches, disappointments, daily work, failures. But a number of accidents that occurred in Fleming's life determined not only his fate, but also led to discoveries that caused a revolution in medicine.
A family
Alexander Fleming (photo above) was born on August 6, 1881 at the Lochfield farm in Ershire (Scotland), which his father Hugh rented from Earl Laudi.
Hugh's first wife died and left him four children, at the age of sixty he married Grace Morton. Four more children appeared in the family. An old gray-haired man, he knew that he would not live long, and was worried whether the older children would be able to take care of the younger ones, to educate them.
His second wife managed to create a friendly, close-knit family. The older children ran the farm, the younger ones were given complete freedom.
Childhood and education
Alec, a stocky boy with blond hair and a charming smile, spent time in the company of older brothers. At five, he went to school a mile from the farm. In severe frosts, to warm her hands along the way, the mother gave the children hot potatoes. In the rain, socks and boots were hung around the neck so that they could serve longer.
At the age of eight, Alec was transferred to a school located in the neighboring town of Darwell, and the boy had to cover four miles. Somehow, during the game, Alec hit his nose on the forehead of a friend, since then he remained with a broken nose. At 12, he graduated from Darwell School. The older brothers agreed that Alec should continue his studies, and he entered Kilmarnock school. The railway was not yet built at that time, and the boy covered 10 km every Monday morning and Friday evening.
At 13.5 years old, Fleming Alexander entered the Polytechnic School in London. The boy showed deeper knowledge than his peers, and he was transferred to 4 classes higher. After school, he began working at American Line. In 1899, during the Boer War, he entered the Scottish regiment and proved himself to be a magnificent shooter.
Medical school
The elder brother Tom worked as a doctor and told Alec that he wasted his brilliant abilities into useless work, he needed to continue his education at a medical school. In order to get there, he passed the high school exams.
In 1901 he entered the medical school at the hospital in St. Mary and began to prepare for admission to the university. He differed from fellow students both in study and in sport. As they subsequently noted, he was much more gifted, took everything seriously and, most importantly, revealed the most significant, directed all his efforts at him and easily achieved his goal.
Everyone who studied there remembers two champions - Fleming and Pannet. After practice, Alexander was admitted to work in the hospital, he passed all the tests and received the right to the letters FRCS (member of the Royal Surgical Corps). In 1902, Professor A. Wright created a bacteriology department at the hospital and, recruiting a team, invited Alexander to it. All further biography of Alexander Fleming will be associated with this laboratory, in it he will spend his whole life.
Personal life
Alexander married on December 23, 1915, during his vacation. When he returned to the laboratory in Boulogne and informed his colleagues about this, they hardly believed that the silent and restrained Fleming had really married. Alexander's wife was a nurse, Irish Sarah McElre, who kept a private clinic in London.
Unlike Alexander Fleming, Sarah was distinguished by her cheerful character and sociability and considered her husband a genius: "Alec is a great man." She encouraged him in all endeavors. Having sold her clinic, she did everything so that he was engaged only in research.
Young bought an old manor near London. Revenues were not allowed to keep a servant. With their own hands, they put things in order in the house, planned a garden and a rich flower garden. On the bank of the river bordering the estate, a boat shed appeared, a path planted with shrubs led to a carved gazebo. The family spent here weekends and vacations. The Fleming House was never empty, they always had friends.
March 18, 1924 the son of Robert was born. He, like his father, became a doctor. Sarah died in 1949. In 1953, Fleming married his colleague Amalia Kotsuri, a Greek woman, for the second time. Two years later, Sir Fleming died of a heart attack.
Wright's Lab
In the Wright’s lab, Fleming learned a lot. It was a great success to work under the guidance of such a scientist as Wright. The laboratory switched to vaccine therapy. Alexander Fleming was sitting over his microscope all night, easily doing all the work. Briefly speaking, the importance of research was that by the opsonic blood index, the patient’s diagnosis could be determined several weeks earlier and many diseases could be prevented. The patient was given a vaccine, and the body produced protective antibodies.
Wright was sure that this was just a step towards exploring great opportunities, and vaccine therapy could be used for infections. Undoubtedly, the laboratory staff believed in vaccination. Bacteriologists from all over the world came to Wright. Patients who heard about a successful treatment method arrived at their hospital.
Since 1909, the bacteriological department has acquired complete independence. I had to work tirelessly: in the morning - in hospital wards, in the afternoon - consultations with patients, whom the doctors recognized as hopeless. In the evening, everyone gathered in the laboratory and studied countless blood samples. Fleming was also preparing for exams and in 1908 successfully passed them, having received the university gold medal.
Impotence of medicine
Fleming successfully treated patients with salvarsan, created by the German chemist P. Erlich, but Wright had high hopes for vaccine therapy and was skeptical of chemotherapy drugs. His students recognized that the opson index is interesting, but requires inhuman efforts to determine.
In 1914, war broke out. Wright was sent to France to create a research center in Boulogne. He took Fleming with him. The laboratory was attached to the hospital and, rising in it in the morning, biologists saw hundreds of wounded, dying from infection.
Fleming, Alexander began to study the effect of antiseptics and saline solutions on microbes. He came to the disappointing conclusion that after 10 minutes, these funds are no longer dangerous for microbes. But the worst thing is that antiseptics did not prevent gangrene, but even contributed to its development. The organism itself most successfully coped with microbes, “sending” white blood cells to destroy them.
Military laboratory
Wright’s laboratory found that the bactericidal property of white blood cells is unlimited, but subject to their abundance. So, by mobilizing hordes of white blood cells, you can achieve the best results? Fleming was closely engaged in research, looking at the soldiers who were tormented and dying from infection, he was burned with a desire to find a means that could kill microbes.
In January 1919, bacteriologists were mobilized, they returned to London, to their laboratory. Even in the war, during the holidays, Fleming Alexander married and began to closely research. Fleming had a habit of not throwing out cups of crops for two to three weeks. The table was always filled with test tubes. They even made fun of him about this.
Discovery of lysozyme
As it turned out, if he, like everyone else, cleaned the table in time, then such an interesting phenomenon would not have occurred. Once, while sorting the cups, he noticed that one was covered with large yellow colonies, but the vast area remained clean. Fleming once sowed mucus from his nose. He prepared a culture of microbes in vitro and added mucus to them.
To everyone's surprise, the liquid turbid from germs became transparent. So did the action of tears. Within a few weeks, all the tears of laboratory assistants were the subject of research. The “mysterious” substance that Alexander Fleming discovered was able to kill non-pathogenic cocci and possessed the properties of enzymes. The name was invented for him by the whole laboratory, it was called micrococcus lysodeicticus - lysozyme.
To prove that lysozyme is in other secrets and tissues, Fleming began research. All garden plants were examined, but egg white turned out to be the richest in lysozyme. It turned out to be 200 times more there than in tears, and lysozyme had a bactericidal effect on pathogenic microbes.
The protein solution was administered intravenously to infected animals - the antibacterial property of blood was enhanced many times. Pure lysozyme should be isolated from egg white. Everything was complicated by the fact that the laboratory did not have a professional chemist. After receiving penicillin, interest in lysozyme will fade somewhat, and research will resume after many years.
Great discovery
In September 1928, Fleming found mold in one of the cups, staphylococcus colonies dissolved near it, and instead of a cloudy mass there were drops like dew. He immediately began research. The discoveries turned out to be interesting - the mold was fatal for anthrax bacillus, staphylococci, streptococci, diphtheria bacilli, but did not act on typhoid bacillus.
Lysozyme was effective against harmless microbes, in contrast, mold stopped the growth of pathogens of very dangerous diseases. It remained to find out the type of mold. In mycology (the science of mushrooms), Fleming was not strong. He sat down at the books, it turned out that it was "penicillium chrysogenum." You need to get an antiseptic that will stop the reproduction of microbes and will not destroy the tissue. This is what Alexander Fleming did.
He grew penicillin on meat broth. Then it was cleaned and poured into the abdominal cavity of animals. Finally, they found that penicillin inhibits the growth of staphylococci without destroying white blood cells. In a word, it behaves like an ordinary broth. It remained to clean it of a foreign protein to use for injection. One of the best chemists in the UK, Professor G. Raistrik, received strains from Fleming and raised “penicillium” not on broth, but on a synthetic basis.
Worldwide recognition
Fleming performed experiments in the hospital on the local use of penicillin. In 1928, he was appointed professor of bacteriology at the university. Dr. Alexander Fleming continued to work on penicillin. But the studies had to be suspended, his brother John died of pneumonia. The “magic bullet” from the disease was in the “broth” of penicillin, but no one could extract it from there.
At the beginning of 1939, Chen and Flory began studying penicillin at the Oxford Institute. They found a practical method for cleaning penicillin and, finally, on May 25, 1940, the day of decisive testing came on mice infected with streptococcus, staphylococcus and clostridium septicum. After 24 hours, only mice injected with penicillin survived. It was the turn to test it in public.
The war began, a medicine was required, but it was necessary to find the strongest strain in order to produce penicillin on an industrial scale. On August 5, 1942, a close friend of Fleming, who was ill with meningitis, was brought to St. Mary’s hospital in a hopeless state, and Alexander tested purified penicillin on it. September 9, the patient was completely healthy.
In 1943, the production of penicillin was established at the plants. And glory fell upon the silent Scotsman: he was elected a member of the Royal Society; in July 1944 the king was awarded the title - he became Sir Fleming; in November 1945 he was awarded the title of doctor three times - in Liège, Louvain and Brussels. The University of Louvain then awarded a doctorate to three Englishmen: Winston Churchill, Alexander Fleming and Bernard Montgomery.
On October 25th, Fleming received a telegram that he, Flory, and Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize. But most of all, the scientist was pleased with the news that he became an honorary citizen of Darwell, the Scottish town, where he graduated from high school and where he began his glorious journey.