What was Fleming's key insight about antibacterial agents?
My central idea was that nature itself often holds the keys to fighting disease. Through my work on lysozyme, an enzyme found in tears and other bodily fluids that could kill certain bacteria, I saw the potential for naturally occurring substances to act as antibacterial agents. The discovery of penicillin, however, was a much more dramatic illustration of this principle. It was about recognizing the unexpected when it appeared. The key was not just finding a substance, but understanding its specific action against bacteria while being relatively harmless to human cells. The proof, as always, lay in the experiment and the observed results.
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