Penicillin's first patient got better, then it ran out

In February 1941 Albert Alexander, a 43-year-old police officer with a severe staphylococcal infection, became the first person treated with penicillin, at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. He improved within days. But the team, led by Adelaide-born Howard Florey, couldn't make enough of the drug. Treatment stopped and he died. The well-known story that a rose thorn caused his infection has no evidence behind it.