PARIS A Frenchman may have discovered penicillin some 30 years before Scotsman Sir Alexander Fleming, an English author said on Saturday. Paris-born scientist Ernest Duchesne described the mould later known as penicillin in an 1897 study for the military health school of Lyon, Briton richard Barry told Reuters. Fleming is credited with having discovered in 1928 that penicillin could kill bacteria, making it the first of a class of potent new drugs known as antibiotics.

(Reuter)