Tareas

EARLY LIFE
Fleming was born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield, a farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was the third of the four children of farmer Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) from his secondmarriage to Grace Stirling Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighbouring farmer. Hugh Fleming had four surviving children from his first marriage. He was 59 at the time of his second marriage, and diedwhen Alexander (known as Alec) was seven.
Fleming went to Loudoun Moor School and Darvel School, and earned a two-year scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London, where he attended theRoyal Polytechnic Institution. After working in a shipping office for four years, the twenty-year-old Fleming inherited some money from an uncle, John Fleming. His elder brother, Tom, was already aphysician and suggested to his younger sibling that he follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington. He qualified MBBS fromthe school with distinction in 1906.
Fleming had been a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force since 1900 and had been a member of the rifle club at the medical school. Thecaptain of the club, wishing to retain Fleming in the team suggested that he join the research department at St Mary's, where he became assistant bacteriologist to Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer invaccine therapy and immunology. He gained a BSc with Gold Medal in 1908, and became a lecturer at St Mary's until 1914. On 23 December 1915, Fleming married a trained nurse, Sarah Marion McElroy ofKillala, County Mayo, Ireland.
Fleming served throughout World War I as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was Mentioned in Dispatches. He and many of his colleagues worked in battlefieldhospitals at the Western Front in France. In 1918 he returned to St Mary's Hospital, where he was elected Professor of Bacteriology of the University of London in 1928. The popular story of Winston...