How to make Penicillin

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In Peoria, Illinois, a new team was set up in the Department of Agriculture’s research laboratory. They utilised their expertise in fermentation and designed new techniques using deep fermentation tanks to make the purification of penicillin as efficient as possible. Cover the container with a sterilized aluminum foil to keep out contaminants and leave it for 7 to 14 days. Do not exceed 14 days, as the Penicillium will starve and die. Petri dishes or other shallow containers (ideally with lids but plastic wrap can be used as lids if needed) Behind the numbers stood a marvel of chemical engineering. Production began with a sterile culture of the penicillin mold, which then was propagated, first in three-liter flasks, next in 200-gallon “seed” tanks. The culture then moved to huge fermenter tanks containing microbe fodder, chiefly corn steep liquor, milk sugar, salts and minerals. The mold was allowed to grow for two to four days.

Sometimes, the properties of these natural sources extend beyond the food and can aid in your personal hygiene. Cranberry extract contains antibacterial and antioxidant compounds, making it a home remedy for urinary tract infections (UTIs). Herbs can be antibiotics, too. A small sampling study of 58 Chinese plants found that 23 had antibacterial properties and 15 had antifungal properties.War-time conditions made industrial production of penicillin difficult. A number of British companies, including Glaxo (now GlaxoSmithKline) and Kemball Bishop, a London firm later bought by Pfizer, took up the challenge. While the liquid is still warm, add in the sugar, agar, or gelatin and mix thoroughly using a sterilized metal spoon or stirrer. The gelatin or agar may not completely dissolve, but this is okay. Top it off with distilled water until it becomes 1 Liter in volume.

Drain the ethyl into a beaker and repeat the steps. Add about 1% potassium acetate and carefully mix. First chill your ethyl acetate inside a freezer. Then, mix your chilled ethyl acetate with the penicillin liquid inside of your separator funnel. You will need to shake these two ingredients together for about half a minute, then let them separate. The ethyl acetate will float to the bottom, carrying with it the purified penicillin and leaving everything else separate. Before we start, we must warn you that this is an incredibly precarious project. Following instructions for how to make penicillin at home is not easy. We’re talking about making antibiotics in your house with nothing but a few ingredients. This is not like making homemade gunpowder or homemade survival food. This is complex, and it’s medicine that you’ll ingest – so if you mess it up, who knows what could happen. To give you an idea of how valuable penicillin was when it first came about in the early 20th century, patients who are being treated with penicillin often had their urine collected just so that it could be reused on other patients. In times of disaster and calamity, antibiotics might become even more valuable than commonly recommended barter items like ammunition, weapons or gold.This is the penicillin table in a U.S. evacuation hospital in Luxembourg in 1945. Photo by Photo12/UIG. Pour the broth into wide, flat jars with a sealable lid. Basically, anything that could work as a petri dish. If you actually have Petri dishes, then use ’em! Penicillin is a hot topic among medically-minded preppers because it’s easy to grow accidentally. In fact, if you have a moldy piece of bread or rotting orange in the fridge, you’re probably growing penicillin already. You’d have to use it right away. Since most infections need multiple rounds of antibiotics to treat, your efforts would be for nothing. Once you’ve strained out the liquid, it’s time to adjust the pH level of the penicillin (if needed). This is obviously very difficult to do without a proper pH tester. You will also need hydrochloric acid, and you will need to drop one small drip after another while testing the pH level until it becomes approx. 2.2.

Rubbing Mold Onto a Wound: Rubbing penicillin mold onto a wound might treat surface bacteria but won’t help much if the bacteria has already spread into the bloodstream. Now you have one more survival skill. The penicillin of your own making should be made only for health benefits in case you are in a survival situation or an SHTF case. Most infections surely can be cured with antibiotics, but there are some antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The infections with such bacteria should be cured under the doctor’s observation. Another thing to mention is that most professionals will not write prescriptions for antibiotics ‘just in case’, as they are not really affordable and are only required in extra cases. But one can substitute the antibiotics with fish antibiotics, which can be bought with no prescriptions. In June 1941 Florey decided to take penicillin to the US in hope of finding a way to scale up production. In 1940, Florey carried out vital experiments, showing that penicillin could protect mice against infection from deadly Streptococci. Then, on February 12, 1941, a 43-year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin. He had scratched the side of his mouth while pruning roses, and had developed a life-threatening infection with huge abscesses affecting his eyes, face, and lungs. Penicillin was injected and within days he made a remarkable recovery. But supplies of the drug ran out and he died a few days later. Better results followed with other patients though and soon there were plans to make penicillin available for British troops on the battlefield. Put a piece of bread, cantaloupe, or citrus fruit in a container in a dark place at 70 degrees F. It should be in a closed (but not airtight) container. It helps to add a few drops of water to the container and leave all but one corner closed to keep in moisture.

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Lilly was particularly successful in making the mold synthesize new types of penicillin by feeding precursors of different structure. Once the fermentation was complete, recovery was also difficult; as much as two-thirds of the penicillin present could be lost during purification because of its instability and heat sensitivity. Extraction was done at low temperatures. Methods of freeze-drying under vacuum eventually gave the best results in purifying the penicillin to a stable, sterile, and usable final form. The next part is extracting penicillin. You can do this by removing any solid part of the liquid first. You can filter it through a piece of cloth to make sure it’s just pure liquid you’re transferring to a different container. Prepare the needed materials, the covered growth media, and the moldy fruit or bread. Make sure everything is within reach. Another vital figure in the lab was a biochemist, Dr. Norman Heatley, who used every available container, bottle and bedpan to grow vats of the penicillin mold, suction off the fluid and develop ways to purify the antibiotic. The makeshift mold factory he put together was about as far removed as one could get from the enormous fermentation tanks and sophisticated chemical engineering that characterize modern antibiotic production today. Returning from holiday on September 3, 1928, Fleming began to sort through petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus, bacteria that cause boils, sore throats and abscesses. He noticed something unusual on one dish. It was dotted with colonies, save for one area where a blob of mold was growing. The zone immediately around the mold—later identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatum—was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth.

Then, combine a teaspoon of sugar, milk powder, citric acid, sea salt, and yeast into your graduated cylinder. Fill it with distilled water until you’re able to reach 100ml. Pour the potato broth on each one of the jars filling them up to three-quarters full, making sure to observe sterility in the process by pouring without the containers touching. Fleming was working with a plate of bacteria, and suddenly his nose dripped right into them. The bacteria around the dripping died off. That is how he came to the idea the human body can work in the same way and could internally hold some substance that could kill bacteria.

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Until 1933, anyone who got an infection was pretty much on their own – you might live or you might die, but nobody could really do anything about it. Even the nobility of Europe frequently died from simple wounds because they got infected and antibiotics had not been invented yet. The only reason human beings don’t really die from ordinary cuts or an infected wounds anymore is because of the discovery of penicillin (and the other antibiotics that followed)