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JUNE 2017 | The Surgical Technologist | 259 poraries relentlessly worked against the death rate caused by infection and infectious diseases. Fleming, and many others, spent so much time in hospital wards doing their research that he grew capable of determining types of infec- tion simply from their characteristic smell. As Europe grew nervous for the impending second world war, these same bacteriologists were furiously researching infection control methods in an effort to avoid the calamity of WWI and the infected patients. Fleming had discovered a bactericidal mold in 1928 upon his observation that a fungus in a forgotten petri dish seemed to repel a replicating Staphylococcus colony. Fleming immediately recognized the potential value of his discovery to the medical community. Converting a fungus into a medication, of course, is not an easy task. He and his team struggled with penicillin on two fronts: growing an adequate amount of the mold for experimentation, and determining how to identify and extract the elements of the mold that killed the bacteria. Fleming and his early collabo- rators ultimately abandoned penicillin because they thought these problems were insurmountable. However, Fleming’s mold discovery found fertile ground in 1938 when two sci- entists at Oxford read his decade-old research article. Ernst Chain and Howard Florey were inspired by the research, and thus began a mission to turn Fleming’s fungus into an antibacterial medication. Chain and Florey recruited a team of scientists to do the research and development on penicillin. The method of extraction was perfected in a single year in the primi- tive labs of Oxford. The development team recognized in studies of mice that parenteral administration was useless. Producing an injectable medicine was far more laborious, but ultimately successful. Urinary evidence of the drug and its desired bactericidal effect was present in the mice after injection. Research on the safety of the drug consisted of a few animal studies and a single, consenting, terminally ill Snap Shot: The Discovery of the Placebo Effect When medication supply ran short of the demand, medics improvised in order to relieve the suffering of the wounded sol- diers. This practice did not go un-noticed. Colonel Henry K Beecher, MD, made the observation in 1943 that offering a severely wounded soldier a cigarette would reduce the amount of morphine needed to control pain. This would lead to Dr Beecher’s dis- covery and research of the powerful placebo. The brain’s ability to bypass pain pathways proved to be an act of humanity and a source of scientific inspiration. When utilizing placebos became a method to validate the action of a drug, Dr Beecher would come to question the morality of this practice and would soon be recognized as the father of medical ethics. Medics attend to wounded soldiers on Utah Beach in France during the Allied Invasion of Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Photo credit: US Army