penicillin and a sovereign God

So I woke up with penicillin on my mind. I knew that it was not all that long ago that penicillin had been developed / discovered as a major antibiotic. So I researched its history. An English scientist, Sir Alexander Fleming noticed an accident with an experiment in 1928. A dish of bacteria had become contaminated with some kind of mold and that mold was dissolving some of the bacteria. After he grew the mold in a pure culture he found that it was effective to kill many kinds of bacteria. By 1941, as World War II was ramping up, scientists from England and the U.S. put their heads together to find a way to produce penicillin on a mass scale. They worked in a lab located in Peoria, Illinois and needed to find some natural mold that was effective in producing penicillin. After a world-wide search they found the best mold producer to come from a moldy cantaloupe in a Peoria market! Production cost went from priceless to only $20 per dose by July 1943 and about 50 cents in 1946. By the time of the D-Day invasion in June of 1944 there was an adequate supply to treat the wounded from that massive battle.

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In the discoveries of man I believe we can often see the hand of God...who is constantly finding ways to bring and preserve life, even in this place where death seeks to consume.

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Psalm 103:² Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
³ who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
⁴ who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion

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blessings,

Rob Smith