2002/09/01 by Milton Wainwright · 1 citation
Medicine · #Historical Medical Research and Treatments
paper · doi:10.1353/pbm.2002.0065
openalex publication_date 2002/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
It is often suggested that, soon after he discovered penicillin, Alexander Fleming lost interest in what became the most important of all the antibiotics. Fleming's notebooks, however, show that he continued working with penicillin throughout the 1930s, even to the point when Florey and Chain became interested in it. During this period, Fleming isolated new airborne molds and checked them for their ability to produce antibacterial agents, and he also investigated other examples of microbial antagonism, such as bacteriophages. Unfortunately, none of this work was published. What follows is a simulation, based largely upon Fleming's notebooks, of a paper that he might have written in early 1940. This version of "Fleming's Unfinished" should once and for all dismiss the view that he failed fully to recognize the significance of his famous discovery.