Making Penicillin

This simple short book will show students how to make Penicillin. Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the bacteria-killing properties of penicillin while conducting research at St. Mary's Hospital in London in the late 1920s. Upon returning to his disorganized lab from a weekend vacation, Fleming noticed that one of the Petri dishes was uncovered and a blue-green mold was growing inside. Rather than tossing the contaminated dish into the trash, he looked carefully and observed that the mold had killed bacteria growing nearby. Quite by accident Fleming had discovered penicillin, the antibiotic released by the mold of the genus Penicillium.