The story spread widely on the network about how the family members of the Nobel Laureate twice saved the life of another: at first Fleming Sr. pulled out a young chill from a quagmire, and then Penicillin opened by his son, Helped a British prime minister to recover from pneumonia. We checked whether it really was.

History usually has the following look.

At the beginning of the 20th century, one Scottish farmer returned home and passed by a swampy area. Suddenly he heard screams for help. The farmer rushed to the rescue and saw a boy whom the swamp slurry was sucked into his terrible abysses. The boy tried to get out of the terrible mass of the swamp quagmire, but each of his motion sentenced him to an imminent death. The boy screamed with despair and fear. The farmer quickly cut down a thick bitch, carefully approached and handed the saving branch to the drowning man. The boy got out to a safe place. A trembling pierced him, he could not calm her tears for a long time, but the main thing is that he was saved!

“Let's go to my house,” the farmer suggested him. “You need to calm down, dry up and warm up.”
“No, no,” the boy shook his head, “dad is waiting for me.” He is very worried, probably.

With gratefully looking into the eyes of his savior, the boy ran away. In the morning, the farmer saw that a rich carriage drove up to his house, drawn by luxurious thoroughbred horses. A richly dressed gentleman came out of the carriage and asked:

“Did you save my son's life yesterday?”
“Yes, I,” the farmer answered.
- How much should I?
“Don't offend me, sir.” You owe me nothing, because I did what a normal person should have done.
- No, I can’t leave it just like that, because my son is very dear to me. What is any amount, ”the visitor insisted.
- I don't want to talk about this topic anymore. Goodbye, ”the farmer turned to leave. And then his little son jumped out onto the porch.
- Is this your son? The rich guest asked.
“Yes,” the farmer answered proudly, stroking the boy on the head.
- Let's do it. I will take your son with me to London and pay for his education. If he is as noble as his father, then neither you nor I will regret this decision.

Several years have passed. The son of the farmer graduated from the school, then - a medical university, and soon his name became worldly known as the name of a person who discovered penicillin. His name was Alexander Fleming.

Before the war itself, one of the wealthy London clinics entered with the most severe form of inflammation of the lungs the son of that same gentleman. What do you think his life saved this time? Yes, Penicillin, opened by Alexander Fleming.

The name of the rich gentleman, who gave the education of Fleming, was Randolf Churchill. And his son was called Winston Churchill, who later became the Prime Minister of England. Winston Churchill once said: "He will be returned to you."

This story got into printed publications With insignificant discrepancies in the plot (in some versions of Churchill, young Fleming saved, not his father). Its earliest references can be found in 1943 - the same when Churchill fell ill and cured of pneumonia. For example, in the note “Fleming Saves Churchill”, which fell into the monthly bulletin of the Council on Healthcare of Indiana, citing the newspaper Indianapolis Star.

Firstly, it is easy to make sure that by the beginning of the 20th century (in 1901) one person involved in this story (Alexander Fleming) turned 20 years old, and the other (Winston Churchill) is 27 at all. So it is difficult to call them boys. The father of the future British Prime Minister Randolph Churchill died in 1895, and the father of the future discoverer of Penicillin Hugh Fleming - and even in 1888. Therefore, the tie of history, if it took place, could turn around only in the second half of the 1880s, when Fleming Jr. has grown up to school age. Actually, approximately the same time is mentioned in a note, a fragment of which we see above.

Secondly, young Alexander Fleming got from Scotland to London, when he was 14, and for a long time he did anything except medicine (Polytechnic School, business work, the position of clerk, service in the Scottish regiment), and only then decided to do medical school, entering a medical school. Moreover, the recent uncle of Alexander, who bequeathed £ 250, was a sponsor of study, and not at all the father of Winston Churchill.

Further, there is no evidence of such actions by Churchill in personal affairs and archives of an influential British family, as well as in all kinds of memories. And this is the family that was in the focus of public attention long before Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister, not to mention a neat attitude towards financial issues in the UK.

The next inconsistency concerns the second part of the story. The fact is that when Churchill fell ill with pneumonia in 1943, he took the drug from a group of sulfanilamides, and not an antibiotic penicillin at all. It is believed that it was sulfapiridin (M&B 693), about which Churchill declared Sami soon after the cure:

“The wonderful M&B, which did not cause me any inconvenience, was used at the very beginning of the disease, and after the seven -day heat the enemy was thrown back.”

True, the British prime minister immediately joked that M&B can also be deciphered as “Moran and Bedford” (the names of his doctors), but this is a clear lyrical retreat. One way or another, but all authoritative sources indicate that the mention in the publications of The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Post of December 21, 1943 Penicillin was the result of a mistake. Penicillin in general by that time has not yet become widespread.

Well, the point in this story was set by Sir Alexander Fleming himself, who, having learned about the plot distributed by the newspapers with a wonderful double salvation, in his letter to Andre Grace called him “amazing fable”. However, the inspiring text with the moral “made by you will return to you” walks around the world to this day.