Which Fleming student first used penicillin successfully to treat an eye infection in 1930?

Cecil George Paine was the first Fleming student to use penicillin successfully to treat an eye infection, in 1930. Working as a pathologist at Sheffield’s Royal Infirmary, Paine applied a crude filtrate from a penicillin-producing mould to patients with eye infections.

On 25 November 1930, he successfully treated ophthalmia neonatorum, a serious infection affecting newborns’ eyes. Historical accounts also describe treatment of an adult eye infection. The preparation was not the purified, standardized penicillin later manufactured during World War II; it was an early fungal extract supplied from Fleming’s work.

Paine’s achievement is often overshadowed by Fleming’s famous 1928 observation of mould inhibiting bacteria. Fleming discovered the antibacterial substance, but Paine supplied some of the earliest documented evidence that it could work in human medicine. Norman Heatley and Howard Florey belong to the later Oxford team that developed purification, testing, and production methods, so they are common but incorrect alternatives for this 1930 clinical milestone.