Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the antibiotic substance, penicillin, in 1929. Penicillin is a natural substance that fights bacteria and other microorganisms, but at the time of its discovery it was unknown what exactly it did. It wasn’t until 1941 that scientists discovered how to use penicillin in medicine.
Penicillin is a type of an antibiotic drug and can be used in both human and veterinary medicine because it kills almost all types of harmful bacteria that cause disease regardless if the organism is on or inside the body or not. Fleming and his colleagues discovered this by tasting samples from their petri dishes instead of creating a controlled environment with sterilization techniques which led to the accidental discovery of penicillin.
