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Medicine in Britain, c1250–present

Case studies: penicillin and the fight against lung cancer

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1

Overview

Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928, Florey and Chain's work at Oxford, the first patient Albert Alexander, American mass production, then the diagnosis of lung cancer, surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and targeted treatment, the smoking ban of 2007, tobacco tax and plain packaging.

What you need to know

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Key term

What did Fleming find in his laboratory in 1928?

Numbers

What did Florey and Chain add to Fleming’s discovery?

Numbers

What happened to the first person treated with penicillin?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What did Fleming find in his laboratory in 1928?

    Model answer

    A dish of staphylococcus bacteria in which a mould had grown and killed the bacteria around it.

  2. 2

    What did Fleming name the substance, and what happened next?

    Model answer

    He named it penicillin and published a paper in 1929, but he could not produce it in quantity and almost nobody took notice.

  3. 3

    What did Florey and Chain add to Fleming’s discovery?

    Model answer

    They purified penicillin at Oxford and proved it cured infection, first in mice and then in a human patient; the three men shared the Nobel Prize in 1945.

  4. 4

    What happened to the first person treated with penicillin?

    Model answer

    Albert Alexander, a policeman, improved greatly but died in 1941 when the supply ran out.

  5. 5

    How did penicillin come to be produced in large quantities?

    Model answer

    American firms were paid by their government to mass produce it once the United States entered the war, and there was enough for the invasion of Europe in 1944.

  6. 6

    How is lung cancer diagnosed today?

    Model answer

    By scans such as CT, then by passing a camera into the airways and taking a small sample of tissue to examine.

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