A guide to growing your own penicillin: treat illness, save lives, make bundles of money. No more running to the doctor like a wimp!

Disclaimer: the title of this post is a joke. Here you will learn to make penicillin if you want to, but you must not sell it. And if you use it, you are on your own. This post is only for fun. (Ha ha.) If you need an antibiotic, go to a doctor. Use only as directed. I only saw the title on a google article and thought it was funny. My alternative title was "Turn Mold into Gold" but that was a bit too disgusting. Second alternative title was "Fun with Flora" but that was too suggestive for my gentle readership. Be warned!

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It occurs to me that some of you may not realize that stale bread is your friend. Or perhaps you are the kind of person who, when performing the annual cleaning of the refrigerator, throws away that old forgotten lemon which has turned a fuzzy blue on one end? You may not even be a connoisseur of blue cheese.

Try not to think of Athlete's Foot as I continue to assure you that fungi is your friend. (Of course I meant "are".)

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Most people credit Alexander Fleming with discovering penicillin. In truth, penicillin has been used as an antibiotic for at least two thousand years; they just didn't call it that. It was noted by scientists before Fleming (Pasteur and Lister, to give two examples) that bacteria wouldn't grow on penicillin. Indeed, if one placed bacteria in a petri dish containing a solution of penicillin, the bacteria would die. The import of this little chance discovery has had earthshaking implications. I don't need to tell you that.

If you are taking notes, penicillin is mostly effective only against gram positive bacteria (staph, strep) and is not that effective against gram negative bacteria (or other fungi, for that matter.)

In ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, molds were used (topically) to treat infections. Sometimes this worked if they got the right mold. Of course, they didn't know WHY it worked, and neither were they able to identify and extract the active ingredient.

As early as 61 BC, soldiers used to store oil cakes for long periods of time and take them into battle to treat infections caused by wounds. These were also used topically, as a poultice, rather than ingested.

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I don't want to insult your intelligence, because all of you already know how to grow mold. Whole wheat bread (better than white bread), citrus (lemons, oranges) are what you are looking for. The blue veins in bleu cheese are already penicillin mold - just cut them out and rub them on the wound (or bind them on the wound) or eat them. (I'm not suggesting you do any of this, that's for sure. You must make your own choices. My suggestions are only if you are out in a jungle with no doctor available, but have access to a French cheese gourmet shop nearby the jungle.)

Grow the mold in a moist (humid) dark environment with air but not too much air. (A bit close and oppressive like a greenhouse. Or a ziplock bag, I guess.) You are trying to culture a mold called penicillium chrysogenum (formerly called penicillium notatum). This mold excretes Penicillin, but you are not likely to master the art of extracting only the penicillin part in your kitchen lab, so this technique is limited primarily to putting the entire mold on the infected wound as is. It is at your own peril that you do this, or if you decide to take it internally (decide to eat it or make a broth and drink it.) This is also not the time to discover you are allergic to penicillin.

I can't stress too often that, where modern medical science is available, a purer form of this crud is preferable. But what if you are shipwrecked on an island with a bad wound and only a piece of old bread? Huh? See? Or what if the nuclear holocaust has contaminated all the drug stores and you are the only person still alive and have just stepped on a rusty nail in the debris? Just think about that, and this post really becomes useful.

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Before the discovery of penicillin, moldy cheese was used as a cure-all by some folks. In fact, it was the "miracle drug" before the real miracle drug of (extracted and refined) penicillin. Eating moldy cheese would cure almost anything (except moldy cheese poisoning.) In ancient times it was believed, since moldy cheese cured so many things, that cheese protected one's soul. Some ancient cultures (not cheese cultures) wore cheese bracelets and necklaces to guard against evil spirits. The mold on them probably repelled evil spirits only by their evil smell.

To this day, the word "cheese" is invoked immediately before having a photo taken, in order to guard against trapping the subject's soul.

Would I lie to you?