--- title: Penicillin History: What Happened to First American Patient description: On Mar. 14, 1942, a patient was treated for blood poisoning with U.S.-made penicillin canonical: https://time.com/4250235/penicillin-1942-history/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-14T12:00:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T15:41:32.355Z article:section: History og:title: Meet the First American Treated With Penicillin og:description: It happened on Mar. 14, 1942 og:url: https://time.com/4250235/penicillin-1942-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47d8ae5fd665db2f/69888a04524fc0484fdf7115/fleming.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Sir Alexander Fleming. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Meet the First American Treated With Penicillin twitter:description: It happened on Mar. 14, 1942 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47d8ae5fd665db2f/69888a04524fc0484fdf7115/fleming.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is What Happened to the First American Treated With Penicillin  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Mar 14, 2016 12:00 PM UTC  Sir Alexander Fleming, the a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist who discovered Penicillin, seen in 1943. Sir Alexander Fleming, the a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist who discovered Penicillin, seen in 1943.Universal History Archive / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Mar 14, 2016 12:00 PM UTC The “marvelous mold that saves lives,” as TIME [put it](http://time.com/vault/issue/1941-09-15/page/57/), was first [discovered](http://time.com/4049403/alexander-fleming-history/) by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but more than a decade would pass before the first American patient was treated with penicillin on this day, Mar. 14, in 1942. The patient was a woman named Anne Miller. The diagnosis was septicemia, also known as blood poisoning, that had left her near death from an infection that followed a miscarriage. She had had a fever of at least 103° for multiple weeks, according to Eric Lax’s _The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle,_ and even surgery and blood transfusions had not helped. By chance, another patient at the hospital caring for Miller happened to know a British scientist who was at that very moment working on developing penicillin into a marketable drug. Miller’s doctor used that connection to get the government—which had tight control over key medicines during wartime—to release roughly a tablespoon of penicillin for his patient. It was, Lax reports, a full half of the entire store of the antibiotic in the whole United States. Within about a day, her temperature was back to normal. Miller was cured. Why had it taken so long for the drug, which was already being tested in the U.K., to get to the U.S.? One reason, TIME [noted](http://time.com/vault/issue/1941-09-15/page/57/) in 1941, was that it was “difficult and expensive to extract” from its original mold source and had not been available in synthetic forms; every time scientists wanted to make penicillin, they had to wait for new mold to grow. A few early test patients in England had [died](http://time.com/vault/issue/1944-05-15/page/63/) after seeming to recover because there wasn’t enough of the drug to complete the course of medicine. Even in [1943](http://time.com/vault/issue/1943-02-08/page/41/), there had only been enough penicillin made in the USA to treat about 30 people. That soon changed. After it became clear that the drug [could help](http://time.com/vault/issue/1943-06-07/page/70/) those wounded in World War II, the Army Medical Corps quickly asked for more to be produced. By May of 1944, enough was being made that civilians could finally get access. “Penicillin,” TIME noted in a [cover story](http://time.com/vault/issue/1944-05-15/page/63/) about Alexander Fleming that year, “will save more lives than war spends.” **_Read TIME’s take on “the wonder drug of 1943,” here in the TIME Vault:_** [Penicillin](http://time.com/vault/issue/1943-02-08/page/41/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4250235/penicillin-1942-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4250235/penicillin-1942-history/"},"headline":"This Is What Happened to the First American Treated With Penicillin","datePublished":"2016-03-14T12:00:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T15:41:32.355Z","description":"It happened on Mar. 14, 1942","url":"https://time.com/4250235/penicillin-1942-history/","keywords":["health","medicine"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47d8ae5fd665db2f/69888a04524fc0484fdf7115/fleming.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt47d8ae5fd665db2f/69888a04524fc0484fdf7115/fleming.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Sir Alexander Fleming.","caption":"Sir Alexander Fleming.","creditText":"Universal History Archive / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/health/","name":"health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4250235/penicillin-1942-history/","name":"This Is What Happened to the First American Treated With Penicillin"}}]}] ```