At auction for 15 thousand dollars was sold to a 90-year-old mold sample

The News that someone has decided to spend 14 617 dollars for disgusting mold sample may seem crazy. But only as long as understand that this can be the most important in the history of mankind has ever grown mold.

Auction house Bonhams just sold a mold sample, which was previously owned by Dr. Alexander Fleming. With lot also came with a cover letter from the Fleming, which specifies that «from this mold was created the world's first sample of penicillin". The buyer, decided to pay almost 15 thousand dollars for this sample wished to remain anonymous.

For those who have forgotten, Fleming is the man who invented penicillin. For his invention, and subsequently saved many lives, he, along with Ernst Boris chain and Howard Walter Florey, won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1945. The fact that this specimen once belonged to Fleming, no doubt, but hardly anyone can say with certainty, if this sample were used in the initial studies of fungi Penicillium chrysogenum, which was actually synthesized the different components of penicillin.

Fleming had to spend many years to the scientific world paid attention to his work. However, when he has finally succeeded and the world recognized his achievements, he began to give away gifts in the form of samples grown in Petri dishes of mold various dignitaries and scientists. Among the dozens of people who got such gifts were Pope Pius XII and Winston Churchill, and even the actress Marlene Dietrich.

According to Kevin brown, archivist at the laboratory Museum Alexander Fleming, not all were so unusual that changed in the end of the world and overcoming his many infections, the gift was welcome. For example, one of the recipients, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip received such a gift already several times and each time I found something like that before.

"Every time he met Fleming, he gave him another Petri dish with mold inside" — said brown edition of the Washington Post.

To be honest – it looks really disgusting. Take a look at the picture above and tell me what it is not. So it is understandable that someone might wonder about such a gift. However, maybe by that time people just didn't realize how important will be the discovery of penicillin. Approximate calculations show that the invention of the Fleming saved the lives of a total of from 80 to 200 million people.

And now some rich person owns is hideous, but at the same time saving humanity part of the story.