Word: florey
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Penicillin was still making news last week. In Britain, its discoverer and chief developer, Professors Alexander Fleming and Howard W. Florey (TIME, May 15), were knighted by King George VI. Sir Howard reported progress toward chemical synthesis of the drug. In the U.S. the available supply for civilians was doubled: penicillin was shipped to 1,000 more hospitals, including some in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands. But the biggest news was on the production front. In May, U.S. plants made 100 billion units of penicillin - one-third more than in April and just 250 times as much...
Thanks and congratulations for that terrifically inspiring, interesting and extremely well-written story of Drs. Fleming, Florey and Chain. It restores my hope in humanity to know that in these times when the world's mass-mind is bent on hate and slaughter there can emerge this man-made miracle which will alleviate human suffering...
Under Dr. Florey's dynamic super vision, the blue-green penicillium mold began to grow again. The researchers dis covered that the best growing temperature is about 75° F.,that the mold needs plenty of air. At first, Dr. Florey's researchers got only about a gram of reddish-brown powder (the sodium salt of penicillin -penicillin itself is an unstable acid) from 100 liters of the mold liquid. But at last, after heroic chemical cookery, they accumulated enough penicillin to test the drug on living creatures...
...Mice and Men. Then eight mice were inoculated with a deadly strain of streptococci. Says Dr. Florey: "We sat up through the night injecting penicillin every three hours into the treated group [four mice]. I must confess that it was one of the more exciting moments when we found in the morning that all the untreated mice were dead and all the penicillin-treated ones alive." During that historic night, Dr. Fleming's vision turned into a medical reality...
Only a Beginning. Penicillin is already big business, yet Dr. Fleming (who discovered it) and Dr. Florey (who made it tick) have got nothing out of it but praise-doctors generally do not patent drugs. Penicillin will save more lives than war spends, but there has been no military citation. Most tangible recognition so far was the Award of Merit of the American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association given to Drs. Fleming & Florey last December. Several months ago, a proposal to give Dr. Fleming a grant from the public funds was brought up in Parliament, but nothing came...