Penicillin (Nobel Lecture)
Delivered during his Nobel Prize lecture in Stockholm on December 11, 1945, detailing the accidental discovery of penicillin and issuing a prophetic warning on antibiotic resistance.
Full Transcript
My Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen: The story of penicillin has a certain romance about it and helps to illustrate the amount of chance which plays a part in scientific investigation.
When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.
I was working on staphylococci, and on a bench in my laboratory I left a culture plate. A spore of Penicillium mold fell from the window onto the agar culture and inhibited the surrounding bacterial growth.
Penicillin has saved countless lives on the battlefields of World War II and in hospital wards across the globe.
But let me issue one warning: There is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops; then the irresponsible person may cause death through bacterial resistance.
Defining Key Excerpts
"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic... But I suppose that was exactly what I did."
"There is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant."
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