How to make Penicillin

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To separate the penicillin, you need to pour your solution into milk bottles. They should be sterilized to ensure that you get the best results. Lu X, et al. (2011). Investigatingantibacterial effects of garlic ( Allium sativum) concentrate andgarlic-derived organosulfur compounds on Campylobacter jejuni by usingfourier transform infrared spectroscopy, raman spectroscopy, and electronmicroscopy. DOI:

Antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fungi which are capable of killing, or inhibiting, competing microbial species. This phenomenon has long been known; it may explain why the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poultice of moldy bread to infected wounds. But it was not until 1928 that penicillin, the first true antibiotic, was discovered by Alexander Fleming, Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital in London. Once you’ve successfully isolated the mold, we have to grow it on a broth made from potatoes and sugar.Before we start, we must warn you that this is an incredibly precarious project. Following instructions for how to make penicillin at home is not easy. We’re talking about making antibiotics in your house with nothing but a few ingredients. This is not like making homemade gunpowder or homemade survival food. This is complex, and it’s medicine that you’ll ingest – so if you mess it up, who knows what could happen. Fortunately, penicillin production began to increase dramatically by early 1944. Production of the drug in the United States jumped from 21 billion units in 1943, to 1,663 billion units in 1944, to more than 6.8 trillion units in 1945, and manufacturing techniques had changed in scale and sophistication from one-liter flasks with less than 1% yield to 10,000-gallon tanks at 80-90% yield. The American government was eventually able to remove all restrictions on its availability, and as of March 15, 1945, penicillin was distributed through the usual channels and was available to the consumer in his or her corner pharmacy. The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s, which began the era of antibiotics, has been recognized as one of the greatest advances in therapeutic medicine. The discovery of penicillin and the initial recognition of its therapeutic potential occurred in the United Kingdom, but, due to World War II, the United States played the major role in developing large-scale production of the drug, thus making a life-saving substance in limited supply into a widely available medicine. Contents So, while you probably have a question that sounds like ‘how to make penicillin at home,’ we should, first of all, dive into details and history.

Sterilize your flask inside heat (oven preferably) at 315 degrees for one hour. While your flask is sterilizing, put one teaspoon each of glucose, citric acid, yeast, milk powder, and sea salt into the graduated cylinder. Then fill the cylinder with water until you have approximately 100 milliliters of fluid inside the container. Cover it with saran wrap leaving 1 inch of the opening uncovered. This is to prevent the bread or fruit from completely drying out. Your mold will first turn gray, then it will begin turning bright blue/green. Once it has become a nice shade of blue-green, you need to cut the bread into chunks and then put those chunks inside of a pre-sterilized container of some sort. Keep the bread pieces incubated inside of the container for another full week in the exact same conditions. The container should be covered but not air tight. After about 8 or 10 days you’ll be left with fermented penicillin. You will see there are some solid parts in the liquid, and these need to be separated out. The liquid is what contains the penicillin. You need to find a coffee filter or a sterilized cheesecloth and use it to strain the penicillin liquid into a sterile container.Do you have a question for Dr. Markel about how a particular aspect of modern medicine came to be? Send them to us at [email protected].