Ask a Prepper
  • DIY |
  • Terms of Use |
  • Privacy Policy |
  • Contact
ask a prepper survival every day
Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
  • Home
  • All Articles
  • Editor’s Pick
  • Survival Knowledge
  • How To’s
  • Store
  • About Claude Davis
  • Home
  • All Articles
  • Editor’s Pick
  • Survival Knowledge
  • How To’s
  • Store
  • About Claude Davis
No Result
View All Result
Menu
Ask a Prepper
Search
No Result
View All Result
Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Home All Articles
How to make penicillin at home

How to Make Penicillin at Home

C. Davis by C. Davis
May 17, 2014
14

How to Make Penicillin at Home

One of the risks most of us will face after the collapse will be an almost total lack of medications. Many of us will sicken and die over things that wouldn’t have even been considered serious before SHTF. After having read this article you learn how to make Penicillin at home. You can either start to make you own penicillin or just use the information in case SHTF or TEOTWAWKI.

Just to give you an idea about how precious will be to know how to make Penicillin, think of this:  during the early penicillin era, the drug was so scarce and so highly valued that it became common to collect the urine from patients being treated, so that the penicillin in the urine could be isolated and reused for other patients.

About Penicillin

Penicillin is an antibiotic which fights bacteria, fungi or microbes in our body. Penicillin was the first antibiotic discovered (1933) – the word means against (anti) life (bio).

Penicillin: C16H18N2O5S

The discovery of penicillin and its medicinal uses was arguably the most important medical discovery of the 20th century. The production of penicillin is a process that has changed dramatically since its beginnings.

Opposed to what most people think, penicillin is used not only for treating colds but also serious diseases like Typhoid Fever, Syphilis, Pneumonia,  Meningitis, Anthrax, Tetanus  Tuberculosis, Chlamydia, Abscesses, Leptospirosis, Lyme disease.

But the most important thing is that it treats infections. Simple cuts can begin to show infection very fast when SHTF. And without an antibiotic, you can develop septicemia (blood infection) or gangrene which are deadly without very powerful antibiotics or surgery. Without antibiotics many people had died because of simple wounds including kings such as Louis XIV, Napoleon III or Gustav III of Sweden.

How to Make Penicillin at Home?

1.    Make Penicillin Fungus

In order to make penicillin at home you first need to grow the Penicillin fungus. The most important thing to remember is to always use sterile techniques or you will likely wind up with growing something else!

Expose a slice of bread to the air, in a dark place and normal-high humidity, at 70 deg. F until a bluish-green mold develops. This process may last up to 7-14 days.

The mold will start out gray, but as it develops will turn bright blue-green. Once it gets started, cut the bread up into pieces and put it in a sterilized flask. Incubate it in the flask for about a week in the same conditions.

You can also make penicillin the same way out of the peel of citrus fruits, cantaloupe or salami.

2.    Prepare the Solution to Separate the Penicillin Substance from the Fungus

Dissolve the following ingredients, in the order listed, into 500ml of cold tap water:

  • Lactose Monohydrate – 44.0 grams – which you can find here
  • Cornstarch – 25.0 grams – which you can find here
  • Sodium Nitrate – 3.0 grams – which you can find here
  • Magnesium Sulfate – 0.25 grams – which you can find here
  • Potassium Phosphate Mono – 0.50 grams – which you can find here
  • Glucose Monohydrate – 2.75 grams – which you can find here or here
  • Zinc Sulfate – 0.044 grams – which you can find here
  • Manganese Sulfate – 0.044 grams – which you can find here

Then add enough cold tap water to make one liter. Use Hydrochloric Acid to adjust the pH between 5.0 and 5.5.

3.    Separate the Penicillin substance

Pour the solution into sterilized milk bottles. Use only enough so that when the bottle is placed in its side, the media does not reach the plug. Add approximately one tablespoon of the spores you’ve grown.

Incubate the bottles at 70 degrees Fahrenheit for 7 days. If the culture produced penicillin, you may see it now in the liquid portion of the solution following this incubation period. Filter the media (using a coffee filter or a thick canvas), plug the bottles and refrigerate immediately. That’s how you make penicillin.

After a few hours use again the hydrochloric acid to adjust the solution to 2.2 Ph. Mix it with cold Ethyl Acetate in a Separatory Funnel and shake well.

Drain the ethyl acetate, from the bottom, into a beaker which has been placed in an ice bath and repeat the process. Add 1% potassium acetate and mix. Now wait until the ethyl acetate will evaporate off. This may take a while.

When it finally dries, the remaining powder contains Penicillin.

There are other ways to make penicillin. In fact, nowadays, pharmaceutical companies make penicillin using other, more complicated, methods. But this was the best solution to make penicillin when it first started. Watch short video:

The resulting penicillin made this way, is actively excreted, and about 80% of a penicillin dose is cleared from the body within three to four hours of administration. In order to have a long lasting effect, scientist combined it with probenecid. When probenecid and penicillin are administered together, probenecid competitively inhibits the excretion of penicillin, increasing penicillin’s concentration and prolonging its activity.

 

How to Test Homemade Penicillin Before Using It

Although you did probably make mold growing on the bread, it is possible you also got other molds.  Even with the right kind of fungi growing, filtering out everything but the penicillin is difficult.

In order to be sure that you did make penicillin and not a toxic substance you have to test it!

Antibiotic activity may be measured in a crude way by making a mold of agar in a petri dish with tiny depressions, introducing a drop of penicillin broth into each depression, innoculating the plate with a known, penicillin-susceptible bacteria, and observing the area of inhibition from the penicillin-laced depressions over several days, compared to controls into which only water has been introduced before innoculation.

If the result is positive, I suggest, before taking it, to try it on an animal in small quantities just to be perfectly sure it’s not harmful. In case you have a sick animal try it on it and see the results. It might get better very shortly!
The penicillin made from this experiment should not be used unless it is a survival situation.

Related Articles:

5 Home Remedies for Diarrhea

How to Make Medicinal Prickled Garlic

How to Make Your Own Charcoal (medical treatment for indigestion or poisoning)

References:

Penicillin Production – Tom OíHare & Lynne White

Industrial Processing – Penicillin Recovery Strategies – Eimear McGlade & Ruairi Lennon

In case of apocalypse, here’s how to make penicillin in your kitchen – Esther Inglis-Arkell

Making Penicillin at Home – Dr. Bones

How To Make Penicillin – Megan McFarland

How To Make Penicillin: Cheap and Tasty Version

why is fema doing spotchecks around farms

 

Tags: DIYemergenciesHow toprotect your familyremediesteotwawki
Print Friendly, PDF & Email
ShareTweetPin38

Comments 14

  1. Kevin says:
    9 years ago

    What is the shelf life for the ingredients listed above? Can they be stored long term?

    Did you like this comment? 2
    1
    Reply
    • C. Davis says:
      9 years ago

      Hi Kevin,

      Most of them don’t have a listed shelf life. Because they are chemical compounds, they may last indefinitely, or at least for some generations.

      The only one that can go bad is the cornstarch, but only if you store it in high humidity.

      More so, the resulted penicillin may last for generations. Shelf life for most medicines including antibiotics is based on maximizing the profit not that the pills will go bad.

      Did you like this comment? 1
      4
      Reply
      • Scrot says:
        6 years ago

        Everything has a half-life. Temperature is also a determining factor when calculating “shelf-lives” of meds. Chemicals dont just exist in perpetuity. They degrade. All it takes is time.

        Did you like this comment? 6
        4
  2. Ken says:
    8 years ago

    Great. But I’m allergic to penicillin. What now?

    Did you like this comment?
    Reply
    • Scrot says:
      7 years ago

      Look into “mega-dose” IV vitamin c (sodium ascorbate). Solid alternative to antibiotics.

      Did you like this comment? 1
      13
      Reply
  3. jo says:
    6 years ago

    And by the way, let’s hope someone will remember how to make bread.

    Did you like this comment? 7
    Reply
  4. ScottySatan says:
    6 years ago

    Blue bread mold is Aspergillus and does not contain pennecillin at all. Pennecillium mold is white. If this worked at all for you, then it would be because you had a lot of contamination of the stuff you actually needed.

    Did you like this comment? 3
    7
    Reply
    • Emil says:
      4 years ago

      Haha, here it says that the mold should be green. https://realfarmacy.com/homemade-penicillin/

      Did you like this comment? 2
      Reply
      • James says:
        4 years ago

        There is so much nonsense being spread around the Internet about this. I teach chemical synthesis, and can assure you, that you are far more likely to poison yourself trying to synthesize penicillin than you are to make an appreciable amount of uncontaminated, useful drug.

        For far less than the cost of buying all these chemicals, and with none of the risk of a botched synthesis, you can just buy a bottle of fish antibiotics online. With the exception of tetracycline, most antibiotics are potent long past their expiration date if kept in a cool, dry, oxygen-free environment.

        This synthesis method is interesting from an academic standpoint, but practical preppers need practical solutions.

        Did you like this comment? 15
        1
    • Namor says:
      3 years ago

      Well… according to Google: About 200 species of Penicillium have been described. They are commonly called the blue or green moulds because they produce enormous quantities of greenish, bluish or yellowish spores which give them their characteristic colours. Spores from this species of mold are found everywhere in the air and soil.

      Did you like this comment? 1
      Reply
  5. CLAUDE MOSER . says:
    5 years ago

    call me at 307-331-7162 getting piss off..where is my order.

    Did you like this comment? 1
    3
    Reply
  6. Emil says:
    4 years ago

    There’s a factual error early on in this article: you can’t treat a cold (or any other virus infection) with antibiotics such as penicillin.

    Did you like this comment? 12
    Reply
  7. harleyxx says:
    3 years ago

    When the SHTF I’ll be heading to the nearest pharmacy with my Glock and a large Garbage back and haul all the essential meds I can get back to my bunker. No way am I going to try to make my own penicillin..

    Did you like this comment? 2
    9
    Reply
  8. JP777 says:
    3 years ago

    Can I substitute battery acid for hydrochloric acid? This recipe reminds me of homemade TNT haha!

    Did you like this comment? 1
    1
    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions Terms & Conditions.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

FOLLOW US ON:

PREPPER RECOMMENDS

YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE AN EMP STRIKE WITHOUT THIS

IF YOU SEE THIS PLANT IN YOUR BACKYARD BURN IT IMMEDIATELY

HOW TO GET 295 POUNDS OF EXTRA FOOD FOR JUST $5 A WEEK

THE AWESOME DIY DEVICE THAT TURNS AIR INTO FRESH WATER

5 INGENIOUS WAYS TO REFRIGERATE YOUR FOOD WITHOUT ELECTRICITY

HOW TO MAKE YOUR HOUSE INVISIBLE TO LOOTERS

Banner Generator

LATEST ARTICLES

America vs Americans

Deinfluencing You: 14 Items You Should Stop Stockpiling Right Now

7 Things That You Should Never Do After An EMP

Don’t Do This

15 Survival Foods That Are Better At Amish Stores

Preppers’ Promised Land (Just Found)

Looter Deterrents You Never Thought Of

This Will Cause The Next American Blackout

10 Myths About Storing Food In 5-Gallon Buckets

How To Start A Prepper Group In Your Community

4 Prepper Mistakes That You Should Actually Make

What Freedoms The Government Is Plotting To Take Away From You By The End Of 2023

25 Survival Items To Hunt For At Flea Markets

How The Native Americans Used To Hide In Plain Sight

15+ Wild Edibles You Should Can This Spring

Combat Boots 101

How Long Can You Store Water Before It Becomes Unsafe To Drink?

Throw It Out!

The First Thing You Need To Do During Civil War

I Visited An Amish Farm And This Happened

Stand Your Ground Law: 5 Things Every Prepper Should Know

No, The Prices Will Not Drop

DIY EMP-Proof Truck

Banner Bor

Banner TLW2

Banner NGP

The Lost Ways Claude Davis

HOW TO

How To Start A Prepper Group In Your Community

How To Store Water In Your Car For An Emergency

How To Looter-Proof Your Home

How To Recondition Old Gasoline

How To Remove Radioactive Particles From Water In Case Of A Nuclear Fallout

How To Make Bread Last For Up To 5 Years

How To Prepare Your Car For SHTF

How To Cook Steak On A Stone In The Wilderness

How To Craft A Deadly Slingshot

How To Make Your Chickens Lay More Eggs

Vote for ask a Prepper

YOU CAN ALSO FIND US ON:

Survial Websites Prepper

Banner H20

Banner LSF Hamburger

Copyright © 2014-2023 Ask a Prepper

  • Home
  • All Articles
  • Ask a Prepper
  • About Claude Davis
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2014-2023 Ask a Prepper

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.