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The chances are that someone you know has been treated, maybe had their life saved, by an antibiotic called Penicillin. An antibiotic is a medicine which stops the growth of, or destroys, things which cause infection and illness. This is not a medical website and I am nowhere near able to understand what happened but the gist of it is that a guy called Alexander Fleming had been studying various bacteria, gone off on holiday and when he came back he found one of his samples, which had been left open, had formed a mould and the mould had killed off the bacteria.
He then grew an example of the mould and discovered it actually killed different types of bacteria. It took him some time to develop this but, with the help of two others, he eventually produced the medicine we know today as penicillin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. Unfortunately, penicillin is not quite so effective today as many bacteria have become resistant to it. Oh, confession time, Fleming was a Scotsman but he was working at St Mary's Hospital in London.
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