Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, but the road from laboratory curiosity to life-saving medicine required a wartime miracle of improvisation and industrial might. When Oxford researchers Howard Florey and Ernst Chain demonstrated penicillin's effectiveness in 1941, the entire world supply could fit in a small jar.
Desperately needing to scale production, Florey's team grew the mold in every available container: bedpans, baking trays, milk bottles, and specially designed ceramic vessels. They extracted the penicillin using a modified bookshelf and an old bathtub. When British industry, consumed by war production, couldn't help, Florey took the project to America.
American researchers at the USDA lab in Peoria, Illinois, made breakthrough after breakthrough: Mary Hunt, a lab assistant, found a particularly productive mold strain on a rotting cantaloupe from a local market. By D-Day in June 1944, enough penicillin had been produced to treat all Allied wounded. Production went from virtually zero in 1942 to 650 billion units per month by 1945. The drug saved an estimated 12-15% of Allied wounded who would have otherwise died from infection.