Penicillin: The Magic Bullet (ATOM Study Guide)

Penicillin: The Magic Bullet (Gordon Glenn, 2006) is a 52-minute documentary using dramatic re-enactment to tell the story behind the discovery and production of penicillin, and the way history may have got it wrong.

When Alexander Fleming telephoned Howard Florey on the night of 5 August 1942, to ask for a sample of his new medicine to treat a sick friend, Florey could not know that his act of generosity in giving Fleming their limited supply would rob him and his team of most of the public credit for the worlds first antibiotic – penicillin.

Fleming had ceased working on the penicillin mould fourteen years earlier because he saw no practical medical application in it. But when he used Florey's gift, as far as the British popular press were concerned, the story was complete. Penicillin was Fleming's discovery and his alone.

In the years that followed, Fleming – for his own reasons perhaps – never put the record straight. This program sets out to do just that.