Penicillin

Professor Alexander Fleming, of the University of Ottawa, is a well respected physician and researcher in the field of medicine. Though his work was greatly disrupted by the British Revolution he has settled well in Canada and gained a reputation amongst the academia there as a leading authority on all things bacterial. Amongst his office neighbours he has gained a reputation as one of the messiest and disorganised people to have ever had an office in a university.
It is perhaps the mark of an intellectual mind that in certain areas of life he is haphazard and disorderly. If this is so the Professor Fleming is one of the greatest minds of the early 20^th Century, or just lucky. In the summer of 1931 he had returned to his office from a week long holiday with his family. By this point, most of his neighbours would have cleared his office in the hopes of relieving the "aroma" which the Professor never seemed to notice. On this occasion however they did not. Maybe they thought after a week long absence he would notice the mess. Whether or not he did is immaterial as what he in fact noticed was an experiment gone ... "wrong?" for want of a better word. Bacteria he had been cultivating had been killed by mould which had grown on the culture plates he was using. "That's funny." he remarked, indeed it was for one of the greatest discoveries of medicine had in fact happened by accident.
Fleming had discovered what he would call penicillin, after the genus of mould on the plates. The result promises to be a potential cure for a myriad of bacterial diseases that have plagued humanity since time immemorial. It's potential was recognised as soon as Fleming showed his discovery to his peers. Who were as excited by his discovery as the were dismayed by the implications this method of research would have on their olfactory faculties.
Fleming, his colleagues, and others have already proven that penicillin is effective in treating a variety of bacterial diseases. Though he warns of the risk of bacteria developing resistance if the drug is not used properly. That aside, the main obstacle seems to be the unfortunate difficulty of mass production, which has been frustratingly out of reach for years.
If penicillin can be produced on an industrial scale, something still not manageable in any country, it promises to be a revolution in medicine. Fleming and others have been working for more than five years to make it a reality. If they can, they will forever change the practice of medicine and treatment of disease.