Editing Alexander Fleming (section)

===Antiseptics===
During World War I, Fleming with [[Leonard Colebrook]] and Sir Almroth Wright joined the war efforts and practically moved the entire Inoculation Department of St Mary's to the British military hospital at [[Boulogne-sur-Mer]]. Serving as a temporary lieutenant of the Royal Army Medical Corps, he witnessed the death of many soldiers from [[sepsis]] resulting from infected [[wound]]s. [[Antiseptic]]s, which were used at the time to treat infected wounds, he observed, often worsened the injuries.<ref name="SingMedJ">{{cite journal|last1=Tan|first1=S. Y.|last2=Tatsumura|first2=Y.|date=July 2015|title=Alexander Fleming (1881–1955): Discoverer of penicillin|journal=Singapore Medical Journal|volume=56|issue=7|pages=366–367|doi=10.11622/smedj.2015105|pmc=4520913|pmid=26243971}}</ref> In an article published in the medical journal ''[[The Lancet]]'' in 1917, he described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result of his own [[glassblowing]] skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were killing more soldiers than infection itself during the war. 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 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.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fleming |first1=Alexander |title=The Physiological and Antiseptic Action of Flavine (With Some Observations on the Testing of Antiseptics) |journal=The Lancet |date=September 1917 |volume=190 |issue=4905 |pages=341–345 |doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(01)52126-1 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2098298 }}</ref> Wright strongly supported Fleming's findings, but despite this, most army physicians over the course of the war continued to use antiseptics even in cases where this worsened the condition of the patients.<ref name="Fleming bio">{{cite journal | last= Mazumdar |first=P. M. | title = Fleming as Bacteriologist: Alexander Fleming | journal = Science | volume = 225 | issue = 4667 | pages = 1140–1141 | year = 1984 | pmid = 17782415 | doi = 10.1126/science.225.4667.1140 | bibcode = 1984Sci...225.1140C }}</ref>