Short description
A story of quirky individuals, missed opportunities, medical prejudice, brilliant science, shoestring research, wartime pressures, and misplaced modesty. This book describes three men, and their colleagues who would battle a lack of money, a lack of resources and even each other to develop a drug that would change the world.
Long description
Many people know that in 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin's antibiotic potential, while examining a stray mould that had bloomed in a dish of bacteria, in his London laboratory. But few realise that Fleming worked only fitfully on penicillin until 1935, and that he is merely one character in the remarkable story of the antibiotic's development as a drug. The others are Howard Florey, Professor of Pathology at Oxford University, where he ran the Dunn School; the German Jewish immigrant and biochemist Ernst Chain; and Norman Heatley, one of the few scientists in Britain capable of the micro-analysis of organic substances. It was these three men, and their colleagues at the Dunn School who would battle a lack of money, a lack of resources and even each other to develop a drug that would change the world. It was these three men, and their colleagues who would be almost forgotten. Why this happened, why it took fourteen years to develop penicillin, and how it was finally done, is a story of quirky individuals, missed opportunities, medical prejudice, brilliant science, shoestring research, wartime pressures, and misplaced modesty.
Review
'Admirable, superbly researched ... Perhaps the most exciting tale of science since the apple dropped on Newton's head' Simon Winchester, NEW YORK TIMES 'Veteran journalist and author Lax takes a revealing look back at the time when world-altering science was done on a shoestring, bringing to brilliant life the story of the first great antibiotic. While Alexander Fleming is the name most often associated with penicillin, it was the Oxford team of Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and Norman Heatley, the author reminds us, that turned Fleming's 1928 discovery of the potent mold into a life-saving miracle drug while working under Spartan and dangerous conditions. Responding to the threat of an imminent Nazi invasion, Heatley proposed that in case they were forced to abandon their work and flee, they preserve the mold spores by rubbing some into the fabric of their clothing. (Hence the title.) Lax first captures the personalities of each of these four men and then moves on to Florey's efforts to scrounge together the funds for his team's work. An initial grant from the Medical Research Council for materials was GBP25, the equivalent then of about $100.00. Funds from the Rockefeller Foundation were more generous, but ingenuity and improvisation remained essential. Heatley cobbled together an apparatus to extract penicillin from mold juice using glass tubing, assorted pumps, copper coils, colored warning lights, and even an old doorbell. The meager amounts of penicillin the team was able to produce showed therapeutic potential, but larger quantities were needed to run the necessary clinical trials. Unable to interest British pharmaceutical companies, they turned to the US, offering to share all their knowledge of how to produce penicillin in return for a supply. Florey and Heatley's dog-and-pony show in the US, the American role in the penicillin story, Fleming's public behavior when the news of penicillin's clinical value became known, the Nobel Prize expectations of those involved all make for fascinating reading. Even sex rears its intriguing head, with both Florey's wife and mistress getting into the act. Informative and thoroughly enjoyable science history.' Kirkus Review