Alexander Fleming Have e Great Quotes | Motivational Quotes Hello World

The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity. One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did. It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to nonlethal quantities of the drug make them resistant. One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall, James Watt watched a kettle boil, Roentgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new. Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy. Nature makes penicillin, I just found it. It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject. The details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual. Penicillin sat on a shelf for 10 years while I was called a quack. The discovery of penicillin was a triumph of accident, a fortunate occurrence which happened while I was working on a purely academic bacteriological problem. Suggested remedy for the common cold, a good gulp of whiskey at bedtime. It's not very scientific, but it helps. If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life. I play with microbes. There are, of course, many rules to this play, but when you have acquired knowledge and experience it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something nobody has thought of. I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be usually is, in fact a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance. In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that valuable antibacterial substances were made by molds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mold growth the staphycoccal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self. I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject. It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Which quotation do you like the most? Don't forget to subscribe.