Why was penecillin invented?

Answer 1

In 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming made a chance discovery from an already discarded, contaminated Petri dish. The mold that had contaminated the experiment turned out to contain a powerful antibiotic, penicillin. However, though Fleming was credited with the discovery, it was over a decade before someone else turned penicillin into the miracle drug for the 20th century. Twelve Years Later In 1940, the second year of World War II, two scientists at Oxford University were researching promising projects in bacteriology that could possibly be enhanced or continued with chemistry. Australian Howard Florey and German refugee Ernst Chain began working with penicillin. Using new chemical techniques, they were able to produce a brown powder that kept its antibacterial power for longer than a few days. They experimented with the powder and found it to be safe. Needing the new drug immediately for the war front, mass production started quickly. The availability of penicillin during World War II saved many lives that otherwise would have been lost due to bacterial infections in even minor wounds. Penicillin also treated diphtheria, gangrene, pneumonia, syphilis and tuberculosis. information gleaned from http://history1900s.about.com/od/medicaladvancesissues/a/penicillin.htm

Answer 2

An innovation is the introduction of anything new, or the new thing itself.

Penicillin, however, goes beyond the mere introduction of a new product, because it introduced an important new type of product, the wonder drug, which was capable of treating many different serious diseases, many of which were beyond cure for medical science of the time. It was the first generally applicable cure for many kinds of bacterial infenctions.

Prior to its introduction, people sometimes died of simple infections because they could not be cured.