During World War I Antiseptics actually killed more soldiers than infection

Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. His best-known achievements are the discovery of the enzyme lysozyme in 1922 and the discovery of the antibiotic substance penicillin from the fungus Penicillium notatum in 1928.

Alexander Fleming served throughout World War I as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, and was Mentioned in Dispatches (a military award for gallantry or otherwise commendable service). After the war, Fleming actively searched for anti-bacterial agents, having witnessed the death of many soldiers from septicemia resulting from infected wounds. Unfortunately antiseptics killed the patients' immunological defences more effectively than they killed the invading bacteria. In an article he submitted for the medical journal The Lancet during World War I, Fleming described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result of his own glass blowing skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were actually killing more soldiers than infection itself during World War I.

Antiseptics worked well on the surface, but deep wounds tended to shelter anaerobic bacteria from the antiseptic agent, and antiseptics seemed to remove beneficial agents produced that actually protected the patients in these cases at least as well as they removed bacteria, and did nothing to remove the bacteria that were out of reach. Despite this, most army physicians over the course of world war I continued to use antiseptics even in cases where this worsened the condition of the patients. Later, Alexander Fleming discovered world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, Penicillin