ABSTRACT
The final decade of the 19th Century saw the introduction of aspirin, antisepsis, x-rays, radium and the conquest of tetanus and diphtheria. Everyone was excited by such spectacular innovations in science and technology but it was the youth, the would-be scientists of the future, who were most enraptured by these advances. One such inspired dreamer was twenty-three year old Ernest Duchesne who enrolled in France's Army Medical School at Lyon in 1895, the same year that his idol, Louis Pasteur, died. While still a medical student, Duchesne experimented with molds to see if they would kill harmful bacteria. In 1897 he reported that certain penicillium molds could indeed do just that-kill bacteria. He had discovered penicillin.
