Ninety-eight years ago this week, a London bacteriologist came back from summer holiday, started sorting through petri dishes he had left stacked on a bench, and noticed one that was speckled with Staphylococcus colonies everywhere except for a clear ring around a blob of mold. The American Chemical Society, which designated the discovery an International Historic Chemical Landmark, dates that moment to September 3, 1928. The bacteriologist was Alexander Fleming of St. Mary's Hospital in London.
That is the story most people know. The part that rarely survives the retelling is that Fleming's mold never produced enough penicillin to treat patients on any meaningful scale. The strain that eventually did come from a rotting cantaloupe bought at a fruit market in Peoria, Illinois.
