Penicillin
A forgotten petri dish makes infection treatable
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Fleming observed the effect in 1928, but it was Florey, Chain and Heatley at Oxford who turned it into a usable drug around 1940, and American wartime industry that mass-produced it. Antibiotics extended life expectancy more than almost any other medical advance, and made modern surgery, chemotherapy and intensive care possible. Fleming warned about resistance in his 1945 Nobel lecture — today regarded as one of the gravest threats to global health.
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Alexander Fleming left a dish of bacteria behind when he went on holiday. When he returned, a mould had killed the bacteria around it. That became penicillin — and suddenly a small cut or a case of pneumonia stopped being deadly.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org