About Unit 4: The Tipping Point



A Fortuitous Discovery
        
         As soon as I read the titled of this unit, a thought came to mind about a tipping point in human history. I recalled the time I had watched an informative YouTube video about an accidental discovery that, quite literally, changed the world. The video started with a quote by Scottish biologist, physician, microbiologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming that said: “Penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation” and what a fortuitous observation that was, because thanks to such serendipity, penicillin is recognized today as one of the greatest advances in pharmaceutics and therapeutic medicine.

          Fleming is said to have discovered penicillin on September 3, 1928 after returning from a holiday and finding one of the petri dishes of his laboratory covered with bacterial colonies, except for one area within it where a blob of mold was growing. The zone immediately around the mold, later identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatum, was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited the growth of bacteria. After conducting few experiments, Fleming concluded that such fungus could actually kill a wide range of harmful bacteria, such as streptococcus, meningococcus and the diphtheria bacillus. Such discovery propelled humanity into the antibiotic age in a time when the treatment, or lack thereof, for infections such as pneumonia, gonorrhea, or rheumatic fever was utterly ineffective. Hence, death rates skyrocketed prior to the discovery of this fungus.

          In conclusion, the serendipitous discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming’s careful observation of one the many dirty petri dishes that laid all over his laboratory, was as a matter of fact, a tipping point in human history that revolutionized the fields of pharmaceutics and medicine and most importantly, positively impacted the lifespan of the human race.


If you are interested in learning more about the discovery of penicillin and what it actually does to fight harmful bacteria, feel free to check out the links below: 

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