Penicillin was so precious in the 1930s that it was re-extracted from patients’ urine.
The discovery of penicillin, one of the world’s first antibiotics, marks a true turning point in human history — when doctors finally had a tool that could completely cure their patients of deadly infectious diseases. Many school children can recite the basics. Penicillin was discovered in London in September of 1928.
In 1946 penicillin became available for the first time in the UK for public use, it transformed medicine worldwide and ushered in the age of antibiotics.