ALEXANDER FLEMING LAUNCHED the antibiotic era in 1928 with the discovery that the blue-green mold Penicillium notatum had contaminated culture dishes in his London laboratory and was excreting a compound that killed staph bacteria growing on the dish. It wasn’t until 13 years later that a drug based on Fleming’s original insight was given to a human being, a British constable hospitalized for an infection. He made what seemed a miraculous recovery — until the supply of penicillin ran out, and he relapsed and died. But its brief success showed that bacterial infections, the leading cause of death for as long as people had been keeping track, could be defeated by science. That recognition ignited a half-century-long fervor for antibiotics — one which has been almost completely lost…

Read the full story from the Boston Globe Magazine here.