The 20th Century: Penicillin, the NHS, and Modern Public Health

Alexander Fleming and Penicillin (1928)

Alexander Fleming discovered in 1928 that a mould (Penicillium notatum) was killing bacteria on a laboratory petri dish. He identified the active substance as penicillin. However, Fleming could not extract it in usable quantities. It was Howard Florey and Ernst Chain who, in 1940-41, developed a method to mass-produce penicillin. By 1944 it was being produced on an industrial scale to treat wounded soldiers in the Second World War. The first antibiotic had changed medicine forever.

The Beveridge Report (1942)

During the Second World War, the government commissioned William Beveridge to report on how to rebuild Britain after the war. His 1942 report identified five "Giant Evils" — Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness — and recommended a welfare state to tackle all of them. The report sold 635,000 copies and received enormous popular support.

The National Health Service (1948)

The Labour government elected in 1945 used the Beveridge Report to create the NHS. On 5 July 1948, Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan officially launched the National Health Service — the world's first universal, free-at-point-of-use health system. Within its first year, 8.5 million dental treatments were given and 5.25 million pairs of glasses were prescribed — demonstrating the enormous scale of unmet health need.