<P> Ernst Chain , Howard Florey and Edward Abraham succeeded in purifying the first penicillin , penicillin G , in 1942 , but it did not become widely available outside the Allied military before 1945 . Later , Norman Heatley developed the back extraction technique for efficiently purifying penicillin in bulk . The chemical structure of penicillin was first proposed by Abraham in 1942 and then later confirmed by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1945 . Purified penicillin displayed potent antibacterial activity against a wide range of bacteria and had low toxicity in humans . Furthermore , its activity was not inhibited by biological constituents such as pus , unlike the synthetic sulfonamides . ( see below ) The development of penicillin led to renewed interest in the search for antibiotic compounds with similar efficacy and safety . For their successful development of penicillin , which Fleming had accidentally discovered but could not develop himself , as a therapeutic drug , Chain and Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Fleming . </P>
<P> Ernst Chain , Howard Florey and Edward Abraham succeeded in purifying the first penicillin , penicillin G , in 1942 , but it did not become widely available outside the Allied military before 1945 . Later , Norman Heatley developed the back extraction technique for efficiently purifying penicillin in bulk . The chemical structure of penicillin was first proposed by Abraham in 1942 and then later confirmed by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1945 . Purified penicillin displayed potent antibacterial activity against a wide range of bacteria and had low toxicity in humans . Furthermore , its activity was not inhibited by biological constituents such as pus , unlike the synthetic sulfonamides . ( see below ) The development of penicillin led to renewed interest in the search for antibiotic compounds with similar efficacy and safety . For their successful development of penicillin , which Fleming had accidentally discovered but could not develop himself , as a therapeutic drug , Chain and Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Fleming . </P>
when were the first antibiotics used to treat diseases
when were the first antibiotics used to treat diseases
1942
1942