What was the name of the first patient treated with penicillin?

The first patient treated with penicillin was Albert Alexander, an Oxford police constable who received the experimental drug in February 1941.

Alexander had developed a severe infection involving streptococci and staphylococci. His condition was so serious that doctors had removed one eye, and he was considered an appropriate candidate for an early human trial. On 12 February 1941, Oxford researchers led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain began intravenous treatment.

The response was dramatic: within a day, Alexander’s fever fell, his appetite returned, and the infection began to improve. However, penicillin was still extremely difficult to produce and purify. The researchers recovered some of the drug from his urine, but their supply ran out after about five days. Alexander relapsed and died on 15 March 1941.

He is sometimes confused with Cecil Paine, who had successfully used penicillin earlier to treat eye infections, or with later patients who received more developed treatments. Alexander’s distinction is that he was the first patient to receive penicillin by injection in the Oxford clinical trials.