What would Alexander Fleming's historical report on penicillin have looked like if he had decided to see it published in LANCET, BMJ or the journal NATURE ?
My guess is that would only have happened if one of his junior team members - acting against Fleming's express orders - had injected a sick mouse with his penicillin juice and found that contrary to the boss's "opinion" , the mouse was cured.
Fleming would swallow his anger , and adopt a much more positive view of his new medicine and seek a more positive tone to describe it , in a much more important journal.
Instead he mentally damned its application as an internal (ie life saving ) medicine for all eternity , damned even its use as an antiseptic unless first synthesized and so decided to bury his report of a new discovery in a new - relatively obscure - Britain-circulating-only - journal ....
Showing posts with label alexander fleming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alexander fleming. Show all posts
Aug 28, 2014
How New York rescued natural life-saving penicillin-for-all from Alexander Fleming
If you are Alexander Fleming you only have to make three big mistakes to win a Nobel prize and eternal acclaim.
Mistake one : insist that penicillin will never be a success unless man first synthesizes it.
(We're still waiting !)
Mistake two : insist that penicillin will never work if taken internally but will only work as a topical antiseptic.
(In fact, penicillin really only works when taken internally, as an antibiotic, to save lives while as an antiseptic it may actually impede healing of minor scrapes and cuts.)
Mistake three : go along with the Churchill government's decision to only make enough wartime penicillin to help frontline Allied forces with wounds moderate enough to be likely to quickly return to battle.
(When America's New Deal-oriented WPB (War Production Board) decided to mass produce wartime natural penicillin, American diplomats were soon using that bounty to save lives (and win hearts and minds) all over the Allied, Neutral and Occupied world.
Soon a Pax Americana (Pax Penicillia ?) was replacing a century-old Pax Britannica.)
Mistake one : insist that penicillin will never be a success unless man first synthesizes it.
(We're still waiting !)
Mistake two : insist that penicillin will never work if taken internally but will only work as a topical antiseptic.
(In fact, penicillin really only works when taken internally, as an antibiotic, to save lives while as an antiseptic it may actually impede healing of minor scrapes and cuts.)
Mistake three : go along with the Churchill government's decision to only make enough wartime penicillin to help frontline Allied forces with wounds moderate enough to be likely to quickly return to battle.
(When America's New Deal-oriented WPB (War Production Board) decided to mass produce wartime natural penicillin, American diplomats were soon using that bounty to save lives (and win hearts and minds) all over the Allied, Neutral and Occupied world.
Soon a Pax Americana (Pax Penicillia ?) was replacing a century-old Pax Britannica.)
Aug 26, 2014
God knows what Henry Dawson did - even if Stockholm didn't
Sometimes people ask me if I think Henry Dawson should have gotten a Nobel Prize for his successful pushing of the wartime mass production of natural penicillin.
As is well known , the Nobel Prize went instead to Howard Florey (and Ernst Chain and Alexander Fleming) despite the abject failure of their alternative wartime synthetic penicillin effort.
(But because so many of Stockholm's Nobel choices have been equally flawed, you can at least praise them for consistency.)
I understand Dawson to be a modest and humble man and I believe he would have regarded his saving of lives as reward enough.
Besides, I explain, Britain really needed a consolation prize (the Nobel) to cheer it up in late 1945.
As is well known , the Nobel Prize went instead to Howard Florey (and Ernst Chain and Alexander Fleming) despite the abject failure of their alternative wartime synthetic penicillin effort.
(But because so many of Stockholm's Nobel choices have been equally flawed, you can at least praise them for consistency.)
I understand Dawson to be a modest and humble man and I believe he would have regarded his saving of lives as reward enough.
Besides, I explain, Britain really needed a consolation prize (the Nobel) to cheer it up in late 1945.
Aug 25, 2014
Manhattan Natural : green Life-Saving , from the concrete jungle ...
The urban jungle that is Manhattan, with all its concrete skyscrapers, should be the very last place on earth where one might expect to see the start of a turning away from the Modern obsession with the artificial and the synthetic and a turn to the Postmodernity's renewed relationship with Nature.
But Manhattan is in fact the place where the wartime mass production of natural penicillin - with all that momentous decision's consequences for postmodernity - actually began .
But Manhattan is in fact the place where the wartime mass production of natural penicillin - with all that momentous decision's consequences for postmodernity - actually began .
Aug 14, 2014
Penicillin for patients : stable ? pure ? or just 'safe enough' ? -- the essential disagreement between Fleming, Florey and Dawson
Alexander Fleming was famously known for his frugality : in speech, in the use of materials and in his physical exertions on his paid job.
Being too self confident in his own intellectual abilities (and perhaps also being too frugal cum lazy in the physical exertion department ?) fatally led him to avoid doing the needed series of experiments to prove up his claim that penicillin would never have time to do its work inside the body.
So he misled himself - and more importantly , the entire world, for 14 years that penicillin would only work on the body, never in the body - and tens of millions died premature deaths that could have/ should have been avoided.
Being too self confident in his own intellectual abilities (and perhaps also being too frugal cum lazy in the physical exertion department ?) fatally led him to avoid doing the needed series of experiments to prove up his claim that penicillin would never have time to do its work inside the body.
So he misled himself - and more importantly , the entire world, for 14 years that penicillin would only work on the body, never in the body - and tens of millions died premature deaths that could have/ should have been avoided.
Wartime Penicillin Drama : 3 non-chemists promote chemical penicillin while 3 working chemists promote natural penicillin ...
Three middle-aged chemist manques who disgracefully put youthful dreams before the public good - at the height of a total war
Three of wartime penicillin's chief protagonists were men who, as youths, had hoped to become hands-on lab research chemists but whom necessity had pushed them instead into becoming medical science desk administrators.
Their names ?
Howard Florey, director of Oxford University's Dunn Path Institute , A. Newton Richards, head of the Medical Division of Vannevar Bush's famous OSRD war-science agency and George W. Merck , head of Merck.
All three greatly respected each other and worked as closely together as the American and British governments (nominally allies) allowed.
Wartime penicillin gave all three a second childhood as chemist manques and disgracefully, they ran with it* .
Even as a world at war panted instead for lots of disease-fighting drugs in any form , as long as they worked , were safe and were available NOW .
Aug 11, 2014
New York Times - succinct for once - on Fleming's penicillin vs Dawson's penicillin
On Feb 23rd 2009 , the New York Times did a story about the first times it ever mentioned penicillin on its pages.
In that article the Times reporter , Nicholas Bakalar , correctly (and yet so succinctly) said that in a major story on May 6th 1941 , the Times described the first ever use of penicillin IN a patient (Aaron Leroy Alston and Charles Aronson , October 16th 1940 at Manhattan's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital).
Completely true , because all previous clinical use of penicillin - stretching back 12 years and all in the UK - had involved the use of penicillin ON a patient.
The breakthrough from harmless to lifesaving happened in North America - in NYC - first.
It was left to Dr Martin Henry Dawson from new Scotland - not Dr Alexander Fleming from old Scotland -to elevate penicillin from a harmless enough antiseptic (ON) to the potent lifesaver it became (IN) - thus ushering in the Age of Lifesaving Antibiotics.
Overwhelming , external antiseptic medications* by themselves do not save patients from acute life-threatening infections - but internal antibiotic medications do .
(*Surgical and nursing procedures that follow strict disinfectant and antiseptic protocols of course do save hundreds of millions of lives worldwide each year , but indirectly, by avoiding future potential infections.)
It was Dr Dawson who lifted penicillin out of a dusty museum of medical curios and stuck it into a dying man's arm and saved his life - not Fleming.
Fleming thought penicillin was only useful as an antiseptic and only if it was first made artificially synthetic - neither which proved in any way accurate.
Bravo Nicolas ------ Fleming : first to put penicillin ON a patient , Dawson : first to put penicillin IN a patient ...
In that article the Times reporter , Nicholas Bakalar , correctly (and yet so succinctly) said that in a major story on May 6th 1941 , the Times described the first ever use of penicillin IN a patient (Aaron Leroy Alston and Charles Aronson , October 16th 1940 at Manhattan's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital).
Completely true , because all previous clinical use of penicillin - stretching back 12 years and all in the UK - had involved the use of penicillin ON a patient.
The breakthrough from harmless to lifesaving happened in North America - in NYC - first.
It was left to Dr Martin Henry Dawson from new Scotland - not Dr Alexander Fleming from old Scotland -to elevate penicillin from a harmless enough antiseptic (ON) to the potent lifesaver it became (IN) - thus ushering in the Age of Lifesaving Antibiotics.
Overwhelming , external antiseptic medications* by themselves do not save patients from acute life-threatening infections - but internal antibiotic medications do .
(*Surgical and nursing procedures that follow strict disinfectant and antiseptic protocols of course do save hundreds of millions of lives worldwide each year , but indirectly, by avoiding future potential infections.)
Antibiotics can only save patients from imminent death if used IN the body - never ON the body
It was Dr Dawson who lifted penicillin out of a dusty museum of medical curios and stuck it into a dying man's arm and saved his life - not Fleming.
Fleming thought penicillin was only useful as an antiseptic and only if it was first made artificially synthetic - neither which proved in any way accurate.
Bravo Nicolas ------ Fleming : first to put penicillin ON a patient , Dawson : first to put penicillin IN a patient ...
Aug 5, 2014
When Manhattan gives world's first penicillin shot : mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow
In May 1941, Dr Martin Henry Dawson told an international gathering of medical scientists that he had treated 4 cases of endocarditis with systemic penicillin and 8 cases of blepharitis with topical penicillin, both with hopeful results.
These results - widely reported by the New York Times, Newsweek, the wire services , even in South Africa's medical journal - first alerted the world to the fact that a half forgotten antiseptic from a dozen years earlier might have actually have wide promise as a life-saving antibiotic.
That was good enough to attract to Dawson's side a citric acid supplier to the soda pop trade, Brooklyn's then moderately sized Charles Pfizer & Co.
These results - widely reported by the New York Times, Newsweek, the wire services , even in South Africa's medical journal - first alerted the world to the fact that a half forgotten antiseptic from a dozen years earlier might have actually have wide promise as a life-saving antibiotic.
That was good enough to attract to Dawson's side a citric acid supplier to the soda pop trade, Brooklyn's then moderately sized Charles Pfizer & Co.
Jul 27, 2014
The Stone the Builders Rejected : how New York saved natural penicillin antibiotics from the British
In London in 1928 , Sir Alexander Fleming discovered natural penicillin as a potential antibiotic but then rejected it - saying it would only be useful if chemically synthesized and even then only as a external antiseptic.
Sir Howard Florey at Oxford, together with chemist Sir Ernst Chain, took up Fleming's challenge to chemically synthesize penicillin and for a decade - from the late 1930s to the late 1940s, his lab chased the chimera of totally synthesized commercial penicillin without any success.
All three men - and these three men alone - got the Nobel Prize for penicillin .
This despite the fact that the penicillin that actually saves lives is still natural in origin, not synthetic , and is a general antibiotic and not a external antiseptic --- never before or since has abject failure been so grandly rewarded !
That penicillin - the penicillin that saved millions of lives during and immediately after the war -is still the the basis of our huge family of related beta lactam antibiotics that remains our front line defence against bacterial death.
It was left to New York to pick up the stone the British builders rejected and make it into the cornerstone of our entire antibiotics industry.
New York (Manhattan) gave the first ever penicillin shots (October 16 1940) not Britain and the patient from Bronx , who was dying from then invariably fatal endocarditis , actually went home alive !
New York had the world's first pilot plant sized penicillin effort (Fall 1940).
New York gave the first ever shots of commercial penicillin
released for use on patients, made by Brooklyn-based Pfizer in March 1942 .
In August 1943, a dying baby from Queens got life-saving penicillin only after the flagship New York newspaper of the Hearst newspaper chain intervened - the story went world-wide and Doctor Mom for the first time started demanding penicillin from government and industry.
More importantly, her story morally inspired the boss of Pfizer to build the world's first serious penicillin plant - posthaste plus plus plus.
Fifteen years after natural penicillin was discovered and rejected , the world's public suddenly wanted tons of it - yesterday .
But virtually all of Big Pharma worldwide - like Fleming and Florey - still preferred to wait for (patentable) synthetic penicillin because natural penicillin could be produced by anyone and what industry really wants free enterprise if it means a lots of new competitors?
In the Fall of 1943, penicillin really got a boost when a Staten Island doctor announced that contrary to the medical consensus , it could cure syphilis quickly and safely.
A much-feared world-wide scourge for 500 years , far bigger than AIDS, suddenly almost a thing of the past - thanks to penicillin !
But natural penicillin was still costly to produce , in terms of units produced per dollar of feedstock , machinery and labour.
Then a scientist in Cold Spring Harbour Long Island was finally listened to - for years he had an idea to make the penicillium produce a lot more penicillin per dollar of effort.
Soon a hundred times as much penicillin was coming out for the same dollar of effort - using his technology today we get 50,000 times (no that is not a typo) per dollar of effort as the world got in the early 1940s.
As a result of inaction by the rest of Big Pharma , New York (read : Pfizer) was left to produce 80% of the penicillin landed on D-Day - and for the rest of the war, the biggest chunk of the entire world's penicillin came from its Marcy Avenue plant.
Even if Sweden's Nobel Committee didn't know all that New York did - and all that Fleming and Florey didn't do - I firmly believe that God only knows what New York had done and He is pleased ....
Sir Howard Florey at Oxford, together with chemist Sir Ernst Chain, took up Fleming's challenge to chemically synthesize penicillin and for a decade - from the late 1930s to the late 1940s, his lab chased the chimera of totally synthesized commercial penicillin without any success.
All three men - and these three men alone - got the Nobel Prize for penicillin .
This despite the fact that the penicillin that actually saves lives is still natural in origin, not synthetic , and is a general antibiotic and not a external antiseptic --- never before or since has abject failure been so grandly rewarded !
That penicillin - the penicillin that saved millions of lives during and immediately after the war -is still the the basis of our huge family of related beta lactam antibiotics that remains our front line defence against bacterial death.
It was left to New York to pick up the stone the British builders rejected and make it into the cornerstone of our entire antibiotics industry.
New York (Manhattan) gave the first ever penicillin shots (October 16 1940) not Britain and the patient from Bronx , who was dying from then invariably fatal endocarditis , actually went home alive !
New York had the world's first pilot plant sized penicillin effort (Fall 1940).
New York gave the first ever shots of commercial penicillin
released for use on patients, made by Brooklyn-based Pfizer in March 1942 .
In August 1943, a dying baby from Queens got life-saving penicillin only after the flagship New York newspaper of the Hearst newspaper chain intervened - the story went world-wide and Doctor Mom for the first time started demanding penicillin from government and industry.
More importantly, her story morally inspired the boss of Pfizer to build the world's first serious penicillin plant - posthaste plus plus plus.
Fifteen years after natural penicillin was discovered and rejected , the world's public suddenly wanted tons of it - yesterday .
But virtually all of Big Pharma worldwide - like Fleming and Florey - still preferred to wait for (patentable) synthetic penicillin because natural penicillin could be produced by anyone and what industry really wants free enterprise if it means a lots of new competitors?
In the Fall of 1943, penicillin really got a boost when a Staten Island doctor announced that contrary to the medical consensus , it could cure syphilis quickly and safely.
A much-feared world-wide scourge for 500 years , far bigger than AIDS, suddenly almost a thing of the past - thanks to penicillin !
But natural penicillin was still costly to produce , in terms of units produced per dollar of feedstock , machinery and labour.
Then a scientist in Cold Spring Harbour Long Island was finally listened to - for years he had an idea to make the penicillium produce a lot more penicillin per dollar of effort.
Soon a hundred times as much penicillin was coming out for the same dollar of effort - using his technology today we get 50,000 times (no that is not a typo) per dollar of effort as the world got in the early 1940s.
As a result of inaction by the rest of Big Pharma , New York (read : Pfizer) was left to produce 80% of the penicillin landed on D-Day - and for the rest of the war, the biggest chunk of the entire world's penicillin came from its Marcy Avenue plant.
Even if Sweden's Nobel Committee didn't know all that New York did - and all that Fleming and Florey didn't do - I firmly believe that God only knows what New York had done and He is pleased ....
Jul 24, 2014
Manhattan gave the world the first life-saving penicillin shot - as well as the first death-dealing A-Bomb
Don't let terrorists like Ramzi Yousef limit Manhattan's wartime role to killing (and here I quote his justification for blowing up the twin towers of the World Trade Centre) "250,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki".
Let us never forget that Manhattan also gave the world its first ever penicillin shots 75 years ago next year.
New York then went on to provide the wartime world with the biggest chunk of its life saving penicillin and in the process developed the new micro-engineering technology used by all the world ever since to make all antibiotics.
It did so by returning to 'the stone the (British) builders had rejected' ---- and made it the cornerstone of our world of antibiotic lifesavers.
Alexander Fleming in London had discovered penicillin 12 years earlier but had decided it would only be useful if made as a patentable man-made economical synthetic and even then only useful as a surface antiseptic - not in an internally-oriented pill or needle.
Howard Florey in Oxford had taken up Fleming's challenge and for a decade his team chased the chimera of man-made patentable economical man-made penicillin - but they never succeeded and no one else ever has.
New York went back to Fleming's original semi-purified natural penicillin and ran with it - in five short weeks Dr Martin Henry Dawson's tiny team had obtained spores, grown it , concentrated it and tested it for toxicity (on Dawson himself).
Now the team was ready to give it to patients dying of then invariable fatal subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE) for lack of it - a young black man from Sugar Hill, Harlem named Aaron Alston and a young Jewish man named Charles Aronson from the Bronx.
SBE patients were then considered the 4Fs of the 4Fs and not a priority to an Anglo-American medical establishment using the excuse of war preparation to curtail social medicine (medicine directed at the poor and minorities).
So the day Dawson picked for history's first penicillin shots couldn't have been more freighted in symbolism.
It was October 16th 1940 - the historic first day of America's draft registration process - a process still going strong 75 years later.
So on a day when all the minds of America and of the Allied and Axis world were focussed on whether or not the hardships of the Great Depression had reduced America's numbers of 1A fit-for-combat youth , a 4F black man and Jew got to make their own history in a quiet corner of upper Manhattan's Columbia University Medical Centre...
Let us never forget that Manhattan also gave the world its first ever penicillin shots 75 years ago next year.
New York then went on to provide the wartime world with the biggest chunk of its life saving penicillin and in the process developed the new micro-engineering technology used by all the world ever since to make all antibiotics.
It did so by returning to 'the stone the (British) builders had rejected' ---- and made it the cornerstone of our world of antibiotic lifesavers.
Alexander Fleming in London had discovered penicillin 12 years earlier but had decided it would only be useful if made as a patentable man-made economical synthetic and even then only useful as a surface antiseptic - not in an internally-oriented pill or needle.
Howard Florey in Oxford had taken up Fleming's challenge and for a decade his team chased the chimera of man-made patentable economical man-made penicillin - but they never succeeded and no one else ever has.
New York went back to Fleming's original semi-purified natural penicillin and ran with it - in five short weeks Dr Martin Henry Dawson's tiny team had obtained spores, grown it , concentrated it and tested it for toxicity (on Dawson himself).
Now the team was ready to give it to patients dying of then invariable fatal subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE) for lack of it - a young black man from Sugar Hill, Harlem named Aaron Alston and a young Jewish man named Charles Aronson from the Bronx.
SBE patients were then considered the 4Fs of the 4Fs and not a priority to an Anglo-American medical establishment using the excuse of war preparation to curtail social medicine (medicine directed at the poor and minorities).
So the day Dawson picked for history's first penicillin shots couldn't have been more freighted in symbolism.
It was October 16th 1940 - the historic first day of America's draft registration process - a process still going strong 75 years later.
So on a day when all the minds of America and of the Allied and Axis world were focussed on whether or not the hardships of the Great Depression had reduced America's numbers of 1A fit-for-combat youth , a 4F black man and Jew got to make their own history in a quiet corner of upper Manhattan's Columbia University Medical Centre...
Jul 23, 2014
Emma Lazarus's message to immigrants : America , if it is about anything , is ALL about second acts ...
F Scott Fitzgerald got it wrong. Not about everything , of course. But the bit about there being 'no second acts in American lives' - that 24/7 bromide of the modern news and entertainment biz.
As Emma Lazarus's own legacy demonstrates , there is plenty of room in America for second and even third acts.
Not really a surprise to readers of the New Testament I suppose.
Or to tens of millions of born again Americans (or to the many fans of Richard M Nixon) .
Emma was actually quite an internationally prominent poet and social activist in her day.
Her poem written to raise funds for the pedestal of the French-donated Statue of Liberty was the definite hit of the fund-raising effort.
But then she took seriously ill with a terminal cancer and so became inactive in America's literary cum social action circles.
Thus, in the lead up to the actual ceremony mounting the statue in New York harbour neither she or her poem was mentioned.
(Again , re-affirming a cliche of the modern news and celebrity biz - you have to be out there all the time self-promoting or you're yesterday's news.)
The poem was also almost totally absent from the many tributes to her on her death in 1887.
No artistic figure , no matter how prominent or how big a seller while alive , remains so unless they created a historically important institution, school of thought or work of art.
That is to say no one remains prominent unless they are taught about in school or college.
One sixty word poem tossed off in an hour, but considered highly suitable for a students' anthology, can easily out-weigh a lifetime spent writing three million profitable words , in this fame game.
Seemingly , Emma lacked that 'hit' .
But in 1903 , a friend of Ms Lazarus , Georgina Schuyler , re-discovered the poem about the statue (The New Colossus) in an used book store.
She succeeded , after a great deal of resistance from Emma's family, in having the last few lines of it engraved on a modest bronze plaque in a corner of the statue.
There it remained un-noticed for another thirty years until a Slovene immigrant and social activist , Louis Adamic , campaigned tirelessly for decades , until his death in 1951 , to turn the poem and the statue into a symbol of how America should still welcome immigrants.
(In 1924, America had closed its doors to all but a handful of immigrants from a handful of nordic protestant countries.)
By 1936, at the fifty year celebration of the statue, FDR's carefully eloquent speech had to take in this new sense of the statue taking in (all) refugees who thereby got a second chance at life in America --- because, in FDR's equally careful bow to the right - America offered expanded liberties (to all those who qualified as good enough to become Americans) - the original meaning of the statue.
Gradually , though still contested today by many on the right, Lazarus's hijacking of the Statue of Liberty's original meaning has won the day.
And what person worldwide would be considered truly educated by others if they instantly failed to know what the words tired, huddled and wretched refer to ?
I have written and spoken before (on my local CBC) about how fragile the early existence of today's universally understood myths often were.
My starting point was simply a passing reference in George F Williston's Saints and Strangers of how during the Revolutionary War , the British took the crucial manuscripts of Governor Bradford, the only real chronicler of the early Plymouth Colony , from out of a Boston church steeple and behind the counter of a humble Halifax grocery store.
There the sheets of paper manuscript detailing the tale of the First Thanksgiving Dinner almost got consumed itself --- as wrappers for greasy pieces of cheese on their way home to hungry post-revolutionary Nova Scotian diners !
This led me to discover the long and windy path to today's universally known account of that first dinner.
So today's story of the first thanksgiving dinner actually is fully faithful to the original event.
However , for most of the 19th century, the story was re-cast as the Indians sending hostile arrows and tomahawks, not peaceful food, to the gathering !
Now I am trying to revive a symbolic tale for Manhattan and America.
True but nevertheless forgotten : Martin Henry Dawson and penicillin-for-all.
His hugely significant role was well noted in the first detailed newspaper and book accounts about wartime penicillin - which coincided with his premature death.
But Dawson had four problems if he wished to have a 'hit' .
He was extremely modest about his role while alive.
He was dead. ( And had no kin or friend who felt like working hard to keep his story alive.)
Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey were alive.
They were total failures in terms of totally failing to do what they intended to do with penicillin versus what America had done so successfully with penicillin.
They were pushy self-promoters. And all of Britain backed them fully in this need to re-cast the history of wartime penicillin as a British triumph.
Academic historians have fully bought into either the Fleming or Florey version .
Though I find it rather noteworthy that generations of Hollywood producers (armed only with cigars rather than doctorates) consider both men's story to be box office poison and have failed to make a movie out of the dramatic events of wartime penicillin.
My efforts might thus seem totally hopeless but for one more bromide from the North American newsroom.
Those heartless bastards in the news and entertainment biz who give you your fleeting 15 minutes of fame and then toss you out like a used condom ?
They love - simply love - a comeback story - clawing your way back out of the grave like a 'where are they now' lazarus.
The latest example - timely this - is Weird Al Yankovic , who write , sings and performs musical video parodies of well known pop songs while sending up pop culture.
The very physically unattractive and supernerdy Yankovic was supposed to remain a one hit wonder from almost 40 years ago - a weird guy playing accordion at a time of heavy metal and punk.
But he hung on in and gradually getting him to parody you
became as crucial to an superstar's ego as dipping your feet in cement in Hollywood or seeing yourself in wax at Madame Tussauds .
This week his latest album debuted at number one in America and the press went crazy --- this just seemed the-paint-by-numbers kit of all comeback stories - even if Weird Al never really left.
Dawson's no prettier than Al - his biting wit not as potent - but morally , his story really can't be beat.
There's hope yet ...
As Emma Lazarus's own legacy demonstrates , there is plenty of room in America for second and even third acts.
Not really a surprise to readers of the New Testament I suppose.
Or to tens of millions of born again Americans (or to the many fans of Richard M Nixon) .
Lazarus arising
Emma was actually quite an internationally prominent poet and social activist in her day.
Her poem written to raise funds for the pedestal of the French-donated Statue of Liberty was the definite hit of the fund-raising effort.
But then she took seriously ill with a terminal cancer and so became inactive in America's literary cum social action circles.
Thus, in the lead up to the actual ceremony mounting the statue in New York harbour neither she or her poem was mentioned.
(Again , re-affirming a cliche of the modern news and celebrity biz - you have to be out there all the time self-promoting or you're yesterday's news.)
The poem was also almost totally absent from the many tributes to her on her death in 1887.
No artistic figure , no matter how prominent or how big a seller while alive , remains so unless they created a historically important institution, school of thought or work of art.
That is to say no one remains prominent unless they are taught about in school or college.
One sixty word poem tossed off in an hour, but considered highly suitable for a students' anthology, can easily out-weigh a lifetime spent writing three million profitable words , in this fame game.
Seemingly , Emma lacked that 'hit' .
But in 1903 , a friend of Ms Lazarus , Georgina Schuyler , re-discovered the poem about the statue (The New Colossus) in an used book store.
She succeeded , after a great deal of resistance from Emma's family, in having the last few lines of it engraved on a modest bronze plaque in a corner of the statue.
There it remained un-noticed for another thirty years until a Slovene immigrant and social activist , Louis Adamic , campaigned tirelessly for decades , until his death in 1951 , to turn the poem and the statue into a symbol of how America should still welcome immigrants.
(In 1924, America had closed its doors to all but a handful of immigrants from a handful of nordic protestant countries.)
By 1936, at the fifty year celebration of the statue, FDR's carefully eloquent speech had to take in this new sense of the statue taking in (all) refugees who thereby got a second chance at life in America --- because, in FDR's equally careful bow to the right - America offered expanded liberties (to all those who qualified as good enough to become Americans) - the original meaning of the statue.
Gradually , though still contested today by many on the right, Lazarus's hijacking of the Statue of Liberty's original meaning has won the day.
And what person worldwide would be considered truly educated by others if they instantly failed to know what the words tired, huddled and wretched refer to ?
I have written and spoken before (on my local CBC) about how fragile the early existence of today's universally understood myths often were.
My starting point was simply a passing reference in George F Williston's Saints and Strangers of how during the Revolutionary War , the British took the crucial manuscripts of Governor Bradford, the only real chronicler of the early Plymouth Colony , from out of a Boston church steeple and behind the counter of a humble Halifax grocery store.
There the sheets of paper manuscript detailing the tale of the First Thanksgiving Dinner almost got consumed itself --- as wrappers for greasy pieces of cheese on their way home to hungry post-revolutionary Nova Scotian diners !
This led me to discover the long and windy path to today's universally known account of that first dinner.
So today's story of the first thanksgiving dinner actually is fully faithful to the original event.
However , for most of the 19th century, the story was re-cast as the Indians sending hostile arrows and tomahawks, not peaceful food, to the gathering !
Now I am trying to revive a symbolic tale for Manhattan and America.
True but nevertheless forgotten : Martin Henry Dawson and penicillin-for-all.
His hugely significant role was well noted in the first detailed newspaper and book accounts about wartime penicillin - which coincided with his premature death.
But Dawson had four problems if he wished to have a 'hit' .
He was extremely modest about his role while alive.
He was dead. ( And had no kin or friend who felt like working hard to keep his story alive.)
Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey were alive.
They were total failures in terms of totally failing to do what they intended to do with penicillin versus what America had done so successfully with penicillin.
They were pushy self-promoters. And all of Britain backed them fully in this need to re-cast the history of wartime penicillin as a British triumph.
Academic historians have fully bought into either the Fleming or Florey version .
Though I find it rather noteworthy that generations of Hollywood producers (armed only with cigars rather than doctorates) consider both men's story to be box office poison and have failed to make a movie out of the dramatic events of wartime penicillin.
My efforts might thus seem totally hopeless but for one more bromide from the North American newsroom.
Those heartless bastards in the news and entertainment biz who give you your fleeting 15 minutes of fame and then toss you out like a used condom ?
They love - simply love - a comeback story - clawing your way back out of the grave like a 'where are they now' lazarus.
The latest example - timely this - is Weird Al Yankovic , who write , sings and performs musical video parodies of well known pop songs while sending up pop culture.
The very physically unattractive and supernerdy Yankovic was supposed to remain a one hit wonder from almost 40 years ago - a weird guy playing accordion at a time of heavy metal and punk.
But he hung on in and gradually getting him to parody you
became as crucial to an superstar's ego as dipping your feet in cement in Hollywood or seeing yourself in wax at Madame Tussauds .
This week his latest album debuted at number one in America and the press went crazy --- this just seemed the-paint-by-numbers kit of all comeback stories - even if Weird Al never really left.
Dawson's no prettier than Al - his biting wit not as potent - but morally , his story really can't be beat.
There's hope yet ...
Jun 11, 2014
"Antibiotics, October 16th 1940 : 75 Years Young !"
My first book on "Agape Penicillin" , due out early in 2015 , is all about the brave Scottish Presbyterian doctor (Dawson) who first gave us penicillin the antibiotic.
It is not at all about the Scottish Presbyterian doctor (Fleming) who discovered penicillin --- but then only used it indolently, for twelve wasted years , as an useless antiseptic.
I have entitled it '75 years young' rather than '75 years old' to emphasize that the real miracle of antibiotics has mostly been for in its effects on younger rather than older patients.
Because, just as in the earlier miracle with Lazarus , people who get life-saving antibiotics still die - the miracle simply consists in moving the goalposts further along , to a point closer to Life's natural ending.
Before 1940, few large upper class families - let alone poorer families - did not know the terror of a healthy five year old child being here today and in an premature grave a few days later.
Those of us of a certain generation know well the difference between an antiseptic and an antibiotic.
Antiseptics were when we scrapped our knee falling off our tricycle - it was part of a ritual involving a cookie, "a kiss to make it better" and some orange liquid from a little bottle.
The orange stuff hurt like hell, hindered healing and promoted scarring but it was all part of the ritual back then.
But antibiotics !
You'll alway remember that fast as the ambulance was , your old family doctor (who usually moved with slow dignity) was much faster.
His car came around the corner on two wheels and he took the steps three at a time - no word of greeting - simply hauled a big needle out of his black bag and plunged it into your baby sister.
You were too young to know exactly why the room was so still and tense - a neighbour had whispered 'meningitis' but that tension suddenly broke with the doctor's next and unexpected act.
He cuddled up to your mother , put an arm familiarly around her shoulders and said "Marge , where's that cuppa ?"
Marge !? Not even your father called her that.
She looked up startled and then happily bustled off , saying "oh , where my manners."
And your father - for the first and only time in your young life - starting crying - big sobs - but smiling to beat the band all the time.
Your little sister is now a grandmother as old as the doctor was then, with grandchildren of her own.
That's what an antibiotic is - and that is why it is so worth celebrating ...
It is not at all about the Scottish Presbyterian doctor (Fleming) who discovered penicillin --- but then only used it indolently, for twelve wasted years , as an useless antiseptic.
I have entitled it '75 years young' rather than '75 years old' to emphasize that the real miracle of antibiotics has mostly been for in its effects on younger rather than older patients.
Because, just as in the earlier miracle with Lazarus , people who get life-saving antibiotics still die - the miracle simply consists in moving the goalposts further along , to a point closer to Life's natural ending.
Before 1940, few large upper class families - let alone poorer families - did not know the terror of a healthy five year old child being here today and in an premature grave a few days later.
Those of us of a certain generation know well the difference between an antiseptic and an antibiotic.
Antiseptics were when we scrapped our knee falling off our tricycle - it was part of a ritual involving a cookie, "a kiss to make it better" and some orange liquid from a little bottle.
The orange stuff hurt like hell, hindered healing and promoted scarring but it was all part of the ritual back then.
But antibiotics !
You'll alway remember that fast as the ambulance was , your old family doctor (who usually moved with slow dignity) was much faster.
His car came around the corner on two wheels and he took the steps three at a time - no word of greeting - simply hauled a big needle out of his black bag and plunged it into your baby sister.
You were too young to know exactly why the room was so still and tense - a neighbour had whispered 'meningitis' but that tension suddenly broke with the doctor's next and unexpected act.
He cuddled up to your mother , put an arm familiarly around her shoulders and said "Marge , where's that cuppa ?"
Marge !? Not even your father called her that.
She looked up startled and then happily bustled off , saying "oh , where my manners."
And your father - for the first and only time in your young life - starting crying - big sobs - but smiling to beat the band all the time.
Your little sister is now a grandmother as old as the doctor was then, with grandchildren of her own.
That's what an antibiotic is - and that is why it is so worth celebrating ...
Jan 6, 2014
World over Word : Penicillin's twelve lost years end with an (applied) ampoule , not an (theoretical) article ...
(Martin) Henry Dawson left no private papers, so his biography must be one of deeds not words.
It actually suits the man : he was a natural history type scientist, not a natural philosophy type.
He lived in the material world , not in the thrusting scientific elite's world of verbal jabs and written rhetorical skills.
No airey castles in Spain, only down to earth reality.
Dawson didn't earn our undying gratitude by writing academic papers about penicillin's potential, writing research grants about penicillin's potential or talking up penicillin's potential .
He merely, swiftly and silently, stuck a needle full of the stuff he had made himself because Big Pharma won't , into a dying man and thereby ended penicillin's dozen years of drought.
No life has ever been saved by a peer-reviewed article alone - it takes hard work and real medicine at the end of a a real needle to do that.
Admire , if you must , Nobel Prize winning Alexander Fleming's verbal skills in publicly dismissing penicillin's use as a lifesaving agent for 14 wasted years.
But also honour Dawson's silent skill in proving him wrong, by saving Charlie Aronson's life, 75 years ago next year ....
It actually suits the man : he was a natural history type scientist, not a natural philosophy type.
He lived in the material world , not in the thrusting scientific elite's world of verbal jabs and written rhetorical skills.
No airey castles in Spain, only down to earth reality.
Dawson didn't earn our undying gratitude by writing academic papers about penicillin's potential, writing research grants about penicillin's potential or talking up penicillin's potential .
He merely, swiftly and silently, stuck a needle full of the stuff he had made himself because Big Pharma won't , into a dying man and thereby ended penicillin's dozen years of drought.
No life has ever been saved by a peer-reviewed article alone - it takes hard work and real medicine at the end of a a real needle to do that.
Admire , if you must , Nobel Prize winning Alexander Fleming's verbal skills in publicly dismissing penicillin's use as a lifesaving agent for 14 wasted years.
But also honour Dawson's silent skill in proving him wrong, by saving Charlie Aronson's life, 75 years ago next year ....
Nov 11, 2013
Finally, a penicillin hero who is NOT "Box Office Poison"
Hollywood has never done a film about the exciting wartime history of the world's best known medicine, penicillin, because the character of two best known protagonists, Alexander Fleming and Howard Fleming - on closer examination - proved 100% pure Box Office poison, particularly to women who are the main customers for medically-oriented dramas.
What exactly Henry Dawson contributed to the success of penicillin has never been in doubt, but what has frustrated American, British and Australian writers on penicillin has been determining just why this normally non-assertive, and now dying, doctor did what he did .
Why exactly did he push so hard and so long to save the "4Fs of the 4Fs" , against the full force of wartime bureaucracy and at the cost of his own life ?
Here indeed was a hero on the Hollywood scale , if only it was clear why he did what he did .
I think the answer as to why he did what he did, is to consider the character-building events in his life, before he settled permanently in New York and ultimately took out American citizenship.
After all, he spent the first two thirds of his relatively short life in Canada , in Nova Scotia ,where he was born and raised, in particular.
An instinctive feel for the uniqueness of Nova Scotia's history and culture in the tremulous period just after the turn of the last century is what all these foreign writers, fine as their other talents are, simply lack.
The story of Henry Dawson's quixotic-seeming but ultimately world-shaking Manhattan Project, his drive to see penicillin provided for ALL humanity, is as much character-driven as it is events-driven.
It is his quietly heroic character that will bring customers to buy the book, see the movie, attend the play and musical, above all to bring out those three hankies.
Any history of wartime penicillin seems like a chaotic jumble of events, one damn thing after another ,with no overarching theme to tie them all together.
But now wartime penicillin will be recast as the leading part of a globe wide conflict, taking place underneath the military events of WWII, between two very different ways of treating our fellow human beings .
And the clashing personalities of Henry Dawson and Howard Florey will aptly represent both sides.
But it is Henry Dawson's noble, selfless character, revealed for the first time, that will finally make the story of wartime penicillin the feel-good movie of the year it has always deserved to be....
What exactly Henry Dawson contributed to the success of penicillin has never been in doubt, but what has frustrated American, British and Australian writers on penicillin has been determining just why this normally non-assertive, and now dying, doctor did what he did .
Why exactly did he push so hard and so long to save the "4Fs of the 4Fs" , against the full force of wartime bureaucracy and at the cost of his own life ?
Here indeed was a hero on the Hollywood scale , if only it was clear why he did what he did .
I think the answer as to why he did what he did, is to consider the character-building events in his life, before he settled permanently in New York and ultimately took out American citizenship.
After all, he spent the first two thirds of his relatively short life in Canada , in Nova Scotia ,where he was born and raised, in particular.
An instinctive feel for the uniqueness of Nova Scotia's history and culture in the tremulous period just after the turn of the last century is what all these foreign writers, fine as their other talents are, simply lack.
The story of Henry Dawson's quixotic-seeming but ultimately world-shaking Manhattan Project, his drive to see penicillin provided for ALL humanity, is as much character-driven as it is events-driven.
It is his quietly heroic character that will bring customers to buy the book, see the movie, attend the play and musical, above all to bring out those three hankies.
Any history of wartime penicillin seems like a chaotic jumble of events, one damn thing after another ,with no overarching theme to tie them all together.
But now wartime penicillin will be recast as the leading part of a globe wide conflict, taking place underneath the military events of WWII, between two very different ways of treating our fellow human beings .
And the clashing personalities of Henry Dawson and Howard Florey will aptly represent both sides.
But it is Henry Dawson's noble, selfless character, revealed for the first time, that will finally make the story of wartime penicillin the feel-good movie of the year it has always deserved to be....
Apr 14, 2013
Atheistic Nature's inordinate fondness for beetles...
The genetically-minded Moderns of the 1930s felt they were facing a grave demographic crisis : why where there so few Ubermensch and so many undermensch: why so few Cedars and so much hyssop ?
In other words, why on earth were there so many beetles, defectives and useless mouths ?
Not believing in a Supreme Being, at least not believing in any Being Superior to themselves, they had to blame the Iron Laws of Nature and Evolution for this un-natural natural fondness for things weak and foolish.
If in ancient times , the Cedars of Lebanon were the biggest, tallest living beings known, the hyssop growing through the cracks in Beth Nielsen Chapman's concrete were 'the lowest of the low', the plant kingdom's equivalent of being the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Seemingly the useless hyssop's only purpose for being put on this earth was to form a home for an equally purposeless mold.
But then, of course, when Fleming found that mold stopped bacteria cold and Dawson stuck it into a patient's arm to save a life, the lowly hyssop was revealed to have had a supreme purpose after all ....
In other words, why on earth were there so many beetles, defectives and useless mouths ?
Not believing in a Supreme Being, at least not believing in any Being Superior to themselves, they had to blame the Iron Laws of Nature and Evolution for this un-natural natural fondness for things weak and foolish.
If in ancient times , the Cedars of Lebanon were the biggest, tallest living beings known, the hyssop growing through the cracks in Beth Nielsen Chapman's concrete were 'the lowest of the low', the plant kingdom's equivalent of being the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Seemingly the useless hyssop's only purpose for being put on this earth was to form a home for an equally purposeless mold.
But then, of course, when Fleming found that mold stopped bacteria cold and Dawson stuck it into a patient's arm to save a life, the lowly hyssop was revealed to have had a supreme purpose after all ....
Feb 10, 2013
Penicillin : biologic 1929-1939 , chemotherapeutic 1939-1949
In 1944, Frank M Berger ( later creator of the post-war drug Miltown but then just a worker in a local municipal public health lab in the remotes of northern England) came up with an unique way of making and using penicillin.
On second thoughts, his method might well have been done first by Alexander Fleming's Wright-Fleming vaccine institute and their pharmaceutical distributor Parke-Davis about 15 years earlier : Penicillin the Biologic.
On further further reflection : should have been done first by Alec Fleming.
Berger's penicillin was only concentrated and purified to the point that not too much penicillin was lost or too much scarce labour and expensive equipment used to create and extract it.
This biological penicillin, Berger claimed, was safe, potent and cheap ---and liquid.
Liquid --- and stored cold in the hospital that made it, ( not usually stored more than a week at most), until the next life-threatening case of blood poisoning in that same hospital was cured by its systemic (ie by needle) application.
The immediate use of whole liquid blood (another biologic dismissed earlier in the war) right at the front lines of combat was/is vital for survival of the badly wounded soldier.
But immediately pouring penicillin or sulfa into the man's dirty wound (ie via "local" application) - counter-intutively - is not.
Quickly getting him back to a hospital-like setting where penicillin or sulfa can be given him systemically, and under more carefully monitored conditions, was still useful.
But, it proved not essential to do so immediately even there ; often the staff could afford to wait to first see if signs of systemic infection were present (usually via a temperature rise.)
Ie, Howard Florey's 1939 claim that penicillin was only useful if made into a dry powder that remained stable at room temperature for months at a time was totally in error --- if life-saving was to be its main (wartime) role.
Berger's efforts were merely the best thought out among the number of doctors advocating biologic penicillin, not by any means the first (Dawson) or the most stunning (Duhig) .
By contrast, Florey was the chief high priest of Penicillin the Chemotherapeutic, (pure,dry,powdery), from first to last its leading advocate....
On second thoughts, his method might well have been done first by Alexander Fleming's Wright-Fleming vaccine institute and their pharmaceutical distributor Parke-Davis about 15 years earlier : Penicillin the Biologic.
On further further reflection : should have been done first by Alec Fleming.
Berger's penicillin was only concentrated and purified to the point that not too much penicillin was lost or too much scarce labour and expensive equipment used to create and extract it.
This biological penicillin, Berger claimed, was safe, potent and cheap ---and liquid.
Liquid --- and stored cold in the hospital that made it, ( not usually stored more than a week at most), until the next life-threatening case of blood poisoning in that same hospital was cured by its systemic (ie by needle) application.
The immediate use of whole liquid blood (another biologic dismissed earlier in the war) right at the front lines of combat was/is vital for survival of the badly wounded soldier.
But immediately pouring penicillin or sulfa into the man's dirty wound (ie via "local" application) - counter-intutively - is not.
Quickly getting him back to a hospital-like setting where penicillin or sulfa can be given him systemically, and under more carefully monitored conditions, was still useful.
But, it proved not essential to do so immediately even there ; often the staff could afford to wait to first see if signs of systemic infection were present (usually via a temperature rise.)
Ie, Howard Florey's 1939 claim that penicillin was only useful if made into a dry powder that remained stable at room temperature for months at a time was totally in error --- if life-saving was to be its main (wartime) role.
Berger's efforts were merely the best thought out among the number of doctors advocating biologic penicillin, not by any means the first (Dawson) or the most stunning (Duhig) .
By contrast, Florey was the chief high priest of Penicillin the Chemotherapeutic, (pure,dry,powdery), from first to last its leading advocate....
Feb 6, 2013
OSRD /1942: did Manhattan Project type thinking bleed over and obstruct the Penicillin Project as well ?
It is crystal clear that Merck's top scientific advisor A N Richards was never a strong advocate for fast-paced penicillin development within Merck, as that drug company casually messed about with penicillin, from November 1939 till August 1941.
That is, Merck had 18 months of some sort of commercial and scientific activity around penicillin , before Howard Florey actually arrived on the scene.
But Florey eventually made Richards a strong convert to the idea of having Richards' military medical weapon oriented agency , the famous OSRD , use penicillin for secret military advantage over the Axis.
It is not clear that this would have extended - in practise - to denying penicillin to dying Axis POWs.
But keeping penicillin a secret from the Axis definitely would have denied penicillin to dying Allied POWs behind Axis lines : something that all of Florey's, Richards' and Fleming's present day defenders universally ignore.
Very much to his credit then that WWI vet and WWII military officer and doctor Robert Pulvertaft did dis-obey orders and shared the secrets of penicillin production with Axis-friendly Turkish doctors.
But imagining a Canadian dying of sulfa-resistant blood poisoning in a German POW camp and the Canadian POWs being told by the German doctor, 'we could save him , if only we had a bit of this Allied-invented penicillin that we've been hearing rumours of'.
When the Canadians ask why doesn't the doctor get some, the doctor says that if the Allies won't even share penicillin with their own dying civilians, how can they be expected to share it with the enemy ?
But could penicillin have really ever have been a potentially secret and successful medical weapon ?
Here I , following closely on Henry Dawson's thinking, definitely part company with Florey and his friend Richards.
Henry Dawson demonstrated - in just five weeks - and under conditions as fully primitive as Fleming's, that one could quickly make a lot of crude penicillin that was non-toxic when injected into humans.
If Fleming and Dawson could do so, (quickly, easily and cheaply, ) so too could the fired up Nazi war machine.
Not so, said Florey -and his side kick Richards.
The scientific characteristics of penicillin haven't changed at all since September 1928, but now , thanks to Florey, the scientific rhetoric totally had.
Florey tells his readers and listeners, to ignore completely what Fleming-the-author says is "penicillin".
To wit, 'a mixture of about two dozen unknown compounds in a slurry of water that is non-toxic even if injected in very large volumes internally, and yet has marked anti-bacterial affects'.
In my revision of the facts, says Florey in his first August 1940 article, "penicillin" is now actually just one of those compounds.
All the rest and all that water are just dirty, dank and dangerous.
Only if penicillin is first pure, dry and stable is it any good.
Because where it is really good , is in the front lines as a local antiseptic for open war wounds (here I do still agree with Fleming) ---- and that idea won't work if crude liquid penicillin must kept viable in portable electric refrigerators.
Who ever has heard of such things ?
But as Florey tells Richards how complex and difficult the purification process is, Richards grows despondent again, but never the less this information does go into the back of Richards brain.
Only to re-emerge in early 1942, when the forces of war censorship and secrecy can be employed in full bloom.
Because complex and expensive separation and purification processes had become very much a two-edged sword for American military science and industry.
Artificial rubber was vital to the war effort - it was easy to make but a real bugger to separate the good rubber from the bad.
Dried blood products held real promise at the front lines - but only if their separation wasn't so complex.
And the Atomic Bomb - a piece of cake to make it work - if only we could get enough pure U-235 separated.
At some point early in 1942, these problems suddenly became military and commercial opportunities in the minds of the OSRD's highest officers.
If only rich, un-bombed America could solve these complex purification problems - and then keep the details secret - this would give them a big military advantage over their poorer enemy opponents.
And give America a post-war commercial advantage as well over its smaller poorer Allied friends like Britain.
So just as we see an abrupt turn around , in mid 1942 , from the OSRD re sharing much atomic information with the British, we start to see the British also get less information from the OSRD about penicillin research as well.
Like synthetic rubber, synthetic quinine, dried blood products and U-235, the very expensive complexity of pure penicillin suddenly made it more, not less ,of an attraction to the military weapon-oriented OSRD.
The key was to keep secret from the American voters and taxpayers just how many miracle cures were happening with the current - relatively impure -penicillin.
Because if they knew that, the newspapers would be filled with it and the Germans and Japanese would hear about it via Neutral nation reporting.
They they too would also start curing their base hospital wounded with crude semi-purified penicillin ,largely negating the military advantage of fully dry stable pure penicillin.
But was there really ever an absolute need for dry stable penicillin to use it in the front lines ?
Poppycock !
Because it turned out that good old crude liquid blood was actually much better than the complex dried stuff at saving soldiers' lives and could just as easily be used even in combat : good old fashioned low tech American ingenuity (not from the OSRD high tech boys of course) came to the rescue.
Cheap, rugged, disposable, parachute-portable plywood ice boxes kept blood and penicillin cold, with refills of ice every couple of days........
That is, Merck had 18 months of some sort of commercial and scientific activity around penicillin , before Howard Florey actually arrived on the scene.
But Florey eventually made Richards a strong convert to the idea of having Richards' military medical weapon oriented agency , the famous OSRD , use penicillin for secret military advantage over the Axis.
It is not clear that this would have extended - in practise - to denying penicillin to dying Axis POWs.
But keeping penicillin a secret from the Axis definitely would have denied penicillin to dying Allied POWs behind Axis lines : something that all of Florey's, Richards' and Fleming's present day defenders universally ignore.
Very much to his credit then that WWI vet and WWII military officer and doctor Robert Pulvertaft did dis-obey orders and shared the secrets of penicillin production with Axis-friendly Turkish doctors.
But imagining a Canadian dying of sulfa-resistant blood poisoning in a German POW camp and the Canadian POWs being told by the German doctor, 'we could save him , if only we had a bit of this Allied-invented penicillin that we've been hearing rumours of'.
When the Canadians ask why doesn't the doctor get some, the doctor says that if the Allies won't even share penicillin with their own dying civilians, how can they be expected to share it with the enemy ?
But could penicillin have really ever have been a potentially secret and successful medical weapon ?
Here I , following closely on Henry Dawson's thinking, definitely part company with Florey and his friend Richards.
Henry Dawson demonstrated - in just five weeks - and under conditions as fully primitive as Fleming's, that one could quickly make a lot of crude penicillin that was non-toxic when injected into humans.
If Fleming and Dawson could do so, (quickly, easily and cheaply, ) so too could the fired up Nazi war machine.
Not so, said Florey -and his side kick Richards.
The scientific characteristics of penicillin haven't changed at all since September 1928, but now , thanks to Florey, the scientific rhetoric totally had.
Florey tells his readers and listeners, to ignore completely what Fleming-the-author says is "penicillin".
To wit, 'a mixture of about two dozen unknown compounds in a slurry of water that is non-toxic even if injected in very large volumes internally, and yet has marked anti-bacterial affects'.
In my revision of the facts, says Florey in his first August 1940 article, "penicillin" is now actually just one of those compounds.
All the rest and all that water are just dirty, dank and dangerous.
Only if penicillin is first pure, dry and stable is it any good.
Because where it is really good , is in the front lines as a local antiseptic for open war wounds (here I do still agree with Fleming) ---- and that idea won't work if crude liquid penicillin must kept viable in portable electric refrigerators.
Who ever has heard of such things ?
But as Florey tells Richards how complex and difficult the purification process is, Richards grows despondent again, but never the less this information does go into the back of Richards brain.
Only to re-emerge in early 1942, when the forces of war censorship and secrecy can be employed in full bloom.
Because complex and expensive separation and purification processes had become very much a two-edged sword for American military science and industry.
Artificial rubber was vital to the war effort - it was easy to make but a real bugger to separate the good rubber from the bad.
Dried blood products held real promise at the front lines - but only if their separation wasn't so complex.
And the Atomic Bomb - a piece of cake to make it work - if only we could get enough pure U-235 separated.
At some point early in 1942, these problems suddenly became military and commercial opportunities in the minds of the OSRD's highest officers.
If only rich, un-bombed America could solve these complex purification problems - and then keep the details secret - this would give them a big military advantage over their poorer enemy opponents.
And give America a post-war commercial advantage as well over its smaller poorer Allied friends like Britain.
So just as we see an abrupt turn around , in mid 1942 , from the OSRD re sharing much atomic information with the British, we start to see the British also get less information from the OSRD about penicillin research as well.
Like synthetic rubber, synthetic quinine, dried blood products and U-235, the very expensive complexity of pure penicillin suddenly made it more, not less ,of an attraction to the military weapon-oriented OSRD.
The key was to keep secret from the American voters and taxpayers just how many miracle cures were happening with the current - relatively impure -penicillin.
Because if they knew that, the newspapers would be filled with it and the Germans and Japanese would hear about it via Neutral nation reporting.
They they too would also start curing their base hospital wounded with crude semi-purified penicillin ,largely negating the military advantage of fully dry stable pure penicillin.
But was there really ever an absolute need for dry stable penicillin to use it in the front lines ?
Poppycock !
Because it turned out that good old crude liquid blood was actually much better than the complex dried stuff at saving soldiers' lives and could just as easily be used even in combat : good old fashioned low tech American ingenuity (not from the OSRD high tech boys of course) came to the rescue.
Cheap, rugged, disposable, parachute-portable plywood ice boxes kept blood and penicillin cold, with refills of ice every couple of days........
Spores and Wartime Secrecy : can they actually co-exist ?
You might think I am going to talk about Anthrax spores and asymmetrical terrorist germ warfare.
But you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
I want to talk instead about wartime penicillin, and a part of it that is never ever discussed.
Its inherently asymmetrical medical nature.
Which appropriately enough, then "drifts over" into its inherently asymmetrical military potential.
So lets start.
And lets start talking about just how the intellectually mis-guided (as well as seriously morally misguided) were the prolonged attempts by the medical establishment in both America and Britain to regard penicillium spores as something that really could remain Top Secret medical military weapons.
And not just the wartime medical establishment, for recently author Eric Lax and his publishers felt they had a real winner in an exciting clock and dagger title for their book on wartime penicillin : "The Mould in Doctor Florey's Coat".
There was always something faintly Walter Mittyesque about Florey anyway - never more so than in the incident that gave this book its title.
Dunkirk was underway just as Florey at long last accepted that ole Flem's penicillin just might be priceless after all.
But how to save penicillin for the rest of the Allied cause, if Britain fell to the Germans ?
'Let's all rub penicillium spores in the inner seams of our clothing - so even if only one of us gets away, the precious fire of penicillin research can still be re-lit elsewhere'.
But none of these Oxford naifs seemed to have dared ask the boss (Florey) just how they came to possess these incredible spores in the first place.
Henry Dawson's first big scientific effort was in promoting the concept of HGT (Horizontal Gene Transfer) ,the instant transfer of genes between different species and even different families of Life, when its initial discoverer seemed reluctant to even publish his work.
Today it is believed that soil bacteria created the first beta lactam antibiotics about ten million years ago and - via HGT - gave it to soil molds who modified it slightly and made it penicillin.
So, sometime in 1928, a particularly productive penicillin producer strain of penicillium mold blow into a fancy home in London.
Alexander Fleming's colleague John Freeman was an expert on allergies, with many rich and powerful patients.
In 1928, Freeman heard a Dutch specialist claim that basement mold spores were the cause of many allergies.
Freeman got his rich London patients (or more likely their scullery maids) to scrape molds off their basement walls to be tested by his most recent hire, Irish-born mycologist Charles La Touche, towards seeking ways to gradually desensitize the patients against their particular household mold allergens.
La Touche had no high tech ways to keep spores inside his lab alone - not that I think in the long run a spore or two doesn't get out of the most secure modern facility.
There are many more fungus than us and they have and will be on the Earth a lot longer than us primarily because of their spores.
Their spores are incredibly tiny examples of temporarily suspended Life - Dried-up Life - inside a very hardy and bumpy package.
Tiny is the key here - so tiny they float anywhere and everywhere on the gentlest of breezes - down the hall and around the world.
Being bumpy but tiny and light doesn't hurt either - they can cling to almost any surface - like a human and its luggage bound for Australia, for example.
However if that surface is the tiniest bit damp and the tiniest bit tasty (they seem willing to eat almost anything faintly organic), they spring back into active slimey life.
One of La Touche's spores drifted out of his room and along the stairs to Fleming open Petri dish.
The rest actually wouldn't have been "legend", if Fleming hadn't promptly taken a sub culture of the resulting "spoiled" petri dish, and carefully and correctly preserved it.
Fleming did little to promote the medical use of penicillin in curing disease but he did vigerously promote it as a useful way for busy hospital labs to easily isolate the so called flu bacteria (sic) .
Dozens of labs world wide got a sample from him - they then gave samples of their samples to at least dozens of others.
That is how Florey got his penicillium spores he was so busy stuffing down his coat - from a sub culture Fleming had sent to the previous director of Florey's Dunn Institute.
The Free World beyond Britain had lots of sub cultures of penicillium spores of the rare - right - type, even without Florey's belated act of charity.
In theory they didn't really need Fleming's spores, only his public article - but in practise, until 1943, they really did need his spores.
Examples of Fleming's spores were actually everywhere - some even better penicillium producers than his original un-mutated version as well.
But they could only be found by teams of researchers seeking hundreds of the right looking blue-green mold on walls and spoiled fruit, and then testing all for their possible anti-bacterial qualities.
Until miracle cures got rumoured about, no one in the world was willing to go to that much effort , just to test a troublesome possible antiseptic.
But by 1943, the miracle cure stories were out amongst the clinical doctors everywhere - and I do really mean everywhere.
Everywhere that Florey went, Egypt, Iran, Russia he had to endure local doctors thrusting excellent producing strains of penicillin molds in his face that they had found locally !
The Axis were just as quick off the mark - Japan got its strain by merely looking about locally.
And the clever Japanese correctly guessed - from one badly reproduced photo in an Egyptian picture magazine - just how best to produce the stuff !
The atomic bomb was effectively secret even if the US had proclaimed it was making one from the rooftops in 1942.
Uranium was everywhere - like penicillium spores - but a bomb from it takes the world's largest, most expensive, building ever built merely to get started on separating pure U-235 from the more abundant U-238.
And without 90% pure U-235, no working bomb. No nothing.
Tons and tons of scarce money, time and effort kept the A-Bomb an American secret, even from the British and Canadians , let alone the Axis and Neutrals.
But by late 1943, popular magazine articles cheekily showed how one could make penicillin at home, on a kitchen top, for about $5 in equipment and growth mediums.
One didn't even need to go out searching for those semi-rare penicillin-producing strains by then.
In a surprising - even shocking - total volt face, the NRRL's Coghill and Raper had released the top two strains of penicillium.
That's right, the top two strains that were then producing most of the Allies' military-bound penicillin - to the public American mold type collection in Washington where, as they told the readers of JAMA worldwide, "anyone" can get some at a "nominal charge".
!!!!!!!!
No word if Argentina's Washington DC based scientific attache quickly took a cab over, got some samples and sent them off to his friends in Germany.
Clearly, penicillin was never a viable secret military medical weapon - Florey and Richards were both , to put it kindly, completely deluded to ever think so.
Deluded by utopian visions of near-total purity.
Because unlike the Atomic Bomb and U-235, penicillin's starting material (the spores) were both common worldwide AND its production fully successful even in a highly impure (aka low tech) state.
This was what Fleming had discovered in 1928 but never acted upon - this was the key insight that Henry Dawson brought to the penicillin story, starting on October 16th 1940....
But you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
I want to talk instead about wartime penicillin, and a part of it that is never ever discussed.
Its inherently asymmetrical medical nature.
Which appropriately enough, then "drifts over" into its inherently asymmetrical military potential.
So lets start.
And lets start talking about just how the intellectually mis-guided (as well as seriously morally misguided) were the prolonged attempts by the medical establishment in both America and Britain to regard penicillium spores as something that really could remain Top Secret medical military weapons.
And not just the wartime medical establishment, for recently author Eric Lax and his publishers felt they had a real winner in an exciting clock and dagger title for their book on wartime penicillin : "The Mould in Doctor Florey's Coat".
There was always something faintly Walter Mittyesque about Florey anyway - never more so than in the incident that gave this book its title.
Dunkirk was underway just as Florey at long last accepted that ole Flem's penicillin just might be priceless after all.
But how to save penicillin for the rest of the Allied cause, if Britain fell to the Germans ?
'Let's all rub penicillium spores in the inner seams of our clothing - so even if only one of us gets away, the precious fire of penicillin research can still be re-lit elsewhere'.
But none of these Oxford naifs seemed to have dared ask the boss (Florey) just how they came to possess these incredible spores in the first place.
Henry Dawson's first big scientific effort was in promoting the concept of HGT (Horizontal Gene Transfer) ,the instant transfer of genes between different species and even different families of Life, when its initial discoverer seemed reluctant to even publish his work.
Today it is believed that soil bacteria created the first beta lactam antibiotics about ten million years ago and - via HGT - gave it to soil molds who modified it slightly and made it penicillin.
So, sometime in 1928, a particularly productive penicillin producer strain of penicillium mold blow into a fancy home in London.
Alexander Fleming's colleague John Freeman was an expert on allergies, with many rich and powerful patients.
In 1928, Freeman heard a Dutch specialist claim that basement mold spores were the cause of many allergies.
Freeman got his rich London patients (or more likely their scullery maids) to scrape molds off their basement walls to be tested by his most recent hire, Irish-born mycologist Charles La Touche, towards seeking ways to gradually desensitize the patients against their particular household mold allergens.
La Touche had no high tech ways to keep spores inside his lab alone - not that I think in the long run a spore or two doesn't get out of the most secure modern facility.
There are many more fungus than us and they have and will be on the Earth a lot longer than us primarily because of their spores.
Their spores are incredibly tiny examples of temporarily suspended Life - Dried-up Life - inside a very hardy and bumpy package.
Tiny is the key here - so tiny they float anywhere and everywhere on the gentlest of breezes - down the hall and around the world.
Being bumpy but tiny and light doesn't hurt either - they can cling to almost any surface - like a human and its luggage bound for Australia, for example.
However if that surface is the tiniest bit damp and the tiniest bit tasty (they seem willing to eat almost anything faintly organic), they spring back into active slimey life.
One of La Touche's spores drifted out of his room and along the stairs to Fleming open Petri dish.
The rest actually wouldn't have been "legend", if Fleming hadn't promptly taken a sub culture of the resulting "spoiled" petri dish, and carefully and correctly preserved it.
Fleming did little to promote the medical use of penicillin in curing disease but he did vigerously promote it as a useful way for busy hospital labs to easily isolate the so called flu bacteria (sic) .
Dozens of labs world wide got a sample from him - they then gave samples of their samples to at least dozens of others.
That is how Florey got his penicillium spores he was so busy stuffing down his coat - from a sub culture Fleming had sent to the previous director of Florey's Dunn Institute.
The Free World beyond Britain had lots of sub cultures of penicillium spores of the rare - right - type, even without Florey's belated act of charity.
In theory they didn't really need Fleming's spores, only his public article - but in practise, until 1943, they really did need his spores.
Examples of Fleming's spores were actually everywhere - some even better penicillium producers than his original un-mutated version as well.
But they could only be found by teams of researchers seeking hundreds of the right looking blue-green mold on walls and spoiled fruit, and then testing all for their possible anti-bacterial qualities.
Until miracle cures got rumoured about, no one in the world was willing to go to that much effort , just to test a troublesome possible antiseptic.
But by 1943, the miracle cure stories were out amongst the clinical doctors everywhere - and I do really mean everywhere.
Everywhere that Florey went, Egypt, Iran, Russia he had to endure local doctors thrusting excellent producing strains of penicillin molds in his face that they had found locally !
The Axis were just as quick off the mark - Japan got its strain by merely looking about locally.
And the clever Japanese correctly guessed - from one badly reproduced photo in an Egyptian picture magazine - just how best to produce the stuff !
The atomic bomb was effectively secret even if the US had proclaimed it was making one from the rooftops in 1942.
Uranium was everywhere - like penicillium spores - but a bomb from it takes the world's largest, most expensive, building ever built merely to get started on separating pure U-235 from the more abundant U-238.
And without 90% pure U-235, no working bomb. No nothing.
Tons and tons of scarce money, time and effort kept the A-Bomb an American secret, even from the British and Canadians , let alone the Axis and Neutrals.
But by late 1943, popular magazine articles cheekily showed how one could make penicillin at home, on a kitchen top, for about $5 in equipment and growth mediums.
One didn't even need to go out searching for those semi-rare penicillin-producing strains by then.
In a surprising - even shocking - total volt face, the NRRL's Coghill and Raper had released the top two strains of penicillium.
That's right, the top two strains that were then producing most of the Allies' military-bound penicillin - to the public American mold type collection in Washington where, as they told the readers of JAMA worldwide, "anyone" can get some at a "nominal charge".
!!!!!!!!
Didn't they know there was a war on ?
No word if Argentina's Washington DC based scientific attache quickly took a cab over, got some samples and sent them off to his friends in Germany.
Clearly, penicillin was never a viable secret military medical weapon - Florey and Richards were both , to put it kindly, completely deluded to ever think so.
Deluded by utopian visions of near-total purity.
Because unlike the Atomic Bomb and U-235, penicillin's starting material (the spores) were both common worldwide AND its production fully successful even in a highly impure (aka low tech) state.
This was what Fleming had discovered in 1928 but never acted upon - this was the key insight that Henry Dawson brought to the penicillin story, starting on October 16th 1940....
Jan 26, 2013
Florey delays penicillin for three more years : powdering the sick mice, May 1940
Just imagine for a moment if Howard Florey had actually done in May 1940 what he claimed he did for the rest of his life.
The one small/simple experiment that Alexander Fleming never did in 1928 and the one small/simple experiment he absolutely needed to do , to become for all time, the fully respected "discoverer" of penicillin.
At least in the eyes of scientists, doctors, historians and knowledgable lay people.
That experiment was to inject some of his mouse juice again into a mouse - but this time a mouse deliberately infected with massive amounts of bacteria, not a healthy mouse.
All to see if his penicillin juice could pricelessly save lives by working internally to root out massive infections, not to merely become another in a long line of antiseptics, to be dabbed on cuts merely as an aid to hurry up their natural scaring and healing.
Fleming never did this experiment.
Fleming would have to have slowly injected half a gram (cc/ml) of penicillin juice into an acutely ill 20 gram mouse, and since each gram had about 4 units of antibacterial activity in it, that would have been only 2 units of antibacterial activity per dose.
He'd have to repeat this about every 16 hours for perhaps three days to cure the mouse.
By contrast, because Florey first concentrated that penicillin juice down to about one thousandth of its original volume by boiling the water away in a vacuum, he ended up with mere milligrams of a dry brown powder - each mg containing the same antibacterial units as a gram of the original penicillin juice.
But after all this hard work, he also LOST two thirds of the original penicillin activity.
(He'd be fired if he did that for long in a commercial industrial fermentation operation !)
He dissolved 10 of those mgs of dry penicillin powder into .3 cc of distilled water ( back to the future again !) and injected perhaps 20 to 40 units of antibacterial activity into another acutely sick 20 gm mouse, saving its life in one large intense dose.
Luckily his mice did not die of needle fever during that single big dose - Fleming's need to give weaker injections, repeated over a longer period of time, did at least reduce the chance of severe side affects.
Properly handled, Fleming's strain routinely actually will give at least 40 units per gram of juice.
Then one half gram of his juice would give the exact same effect as 10 mg of Florey's dried powder (10 units in both cases.)
So an alternative path to Florey's tiresome and loss-inducing concentrating and purifying of tiny amounts of antibacterial activity in the original juice was to fire the team chemist and hire instead an industrial mycologist (fungus fermentation specialist) who knew how to starve a mold into giving more , not less, penicillin !
Up till Florey, all those who had written scientific articles on penicillin had acted as if it would be used as a non-toxic and wholly natural liquid , much as natural liver extracts were used to save those with pernicious anemia.
Florey introduced a totally new - and totally bogus - wrinkle into the effort to put penicillin to work saving lives.
He suddenly claimed that penicillin juice was NOT non-toxic - unknown parts of it was toxic "impurities" and that only the fully pure penicillin was non-toxic.
Though how he knew this, well in advance of getting anywhere near full purification, I best leave to your wild imagination !
Particularly if you knew some healthy person who died suddenly of anaphylactic shock after a routine dose of 100% pure penicillin.
I am afraid I can never forgive Florey for the wasted years and wasted diversion of effort into purifying penicillin juice instead of simply pouring it - NOW ! - into dying patients.....
The one small/simple experiment that Alexander Fleming never did in 1928 and the one small/simple experiment he absolutely needed to do , to become for all time, the fully respected "discoverer" of penicillin.
At least in the eyes of scientists, doctors, historians and knowledgable lay people.
That experiment was to inject some of his mouse juice again into a mouse - but this time a mouse deliberately infected with massive amounts of bacteria, not a healthy mouse.
All to see if his penicillin juice could pricelessly save lives by working internally to root out massive infections, not to merely become another in a long line of antiseptics, to be dabbed on cuts merely as an aid to hurry up their natural scaring and healing.
Fleming never did this experiment.
Crucially, neither did Florey.
Fleming would have to have slowly injected half a gram (cc/ml) of penicillin juice into an acutely ill 20 gram mouse, and since each gram had about 4 units of antibacterial activity in it, that would have been only 2 units of antibacterial activity per dose.
He'd have to repeat this about every 16 hours for perhaps three days to cure the mouse.
By contrast, because Florey first concentrated that penicillin juice down to about one thousandth of its original volume by boiling the water away in a vacuum, he ended up with mere milligrams of a dry brown powder - each mg containing the same antibacterial units as a gram of the original penicillin juice.
But after all this hard work, he also LOST two thirds of the original penicillin activity.
(He'd be fired if he did that for long in a commercial industrial fermentation operation !)
He dissolved 10 of those mgs of dry penicillin powder into .3 cc of distilled water ( back to the future again !) and injected perhaps 20 to 40 units of antibacterial activity into another acutely sick 20 gm mouse, saving its life in one large intense dose.
Luckily his mice did not die of needle fever during that single big dose - Fleming's need to give weaker injections, repeated over a longer period of time, did at least reduce the chance of severe side affects.
Properly handled, Fleming's strain routinely actually will give at least 40 units per gram of juice.
Then one half gram of his juice would give the exact same effect as 10 mg of Florey's dried powder (10 units in both cases.)
So an alternative path to Florey's tiresome and loss-inducing concentrating and purifying of tiny amounts of antibacterial activity in the original juice was to fire the team chemist and hire instead an industrial mycologist (fungus fermentation specialist) who knew how to starve a mold into giving more , not less, penicillin !
Up till Florey, all those who had written scientific articles on penicillin had acted as if it would be used as a non-toxic and wholly natural liquid , much as natural liver extracts were used to save those with pernicious anemia.
Florey introduced a totally new - and totally bogus - wrinkle into the effort to put penicillin to work saving lives.
He suddenly claimed that penicillin juice was NOT non-toxic - unknown parts of it was toxic "impurities" and that only the fully pure penicillin was non-toxic.
Though how he knew this, well in advance of getting anywhere near full purification, I best leave to your wild imagination !
Particularly if you knew some healthy person who died suddenly of anaphylactic shock after a routine dose of 100% pure penicillin.
I am afraid I can never forgive Florey for the wasted years and wasted diversion of effort into purifying penicillin juice instead of simply pouring it - NOW ! - into dying patients.....
Jan 24, 2013
Nobel prize merely for concentrating penicillin into a SOLID for therapeutic use ?
Gloria T Sanders (in her 1986 book on amputations of the lower limbs) mentions in passing that Howard Florey was the first to concentrate penicillin into a solid, so it could finally be used in human therapy.
This has become a commonplace in recent years, as a Google search on "Florey" and "concentrated" will quickly reveal, replacing earlier claims that he was the first to "purify" penicillin.
But since the solid penicillin was in fact not a whit more stable than Fleming's original liquid penicillin, if both were properly stored, it offered no advantages to Fleming's wet stuff and a whole lot of disadvantages.
Florey's team had to do a great deal of expensive and labour-intensive chemical work to reduce 3 grams of watery penicillin (containing about 6 to 12 units of biological activity in total) to one milligram of solid penicillin containing about 2 to 4 units in total.
So now, instead of saving three dying patients, only one could be selected to live and the other two had to be triaged to die prematurely.
Remind me again how this was a therapeutic improvement !
And in addition, since life-saving penicillin had to be injected not swallowed, that dry milligram of penicillin had to be dissolved back into three grams of water, to put into the human body.
It seemed a long and wasteful effort, only to end up right back where you began.
The view that anything dried was inevitably better ,"more modern", than its fresh and juicy original was common in the era between the two world wars, particularly in Florey's Britain.
British cooking in the 1920s can be practically defined by the sudden availability year around of abundant and cheap dried fruits from all over the Empire.
Even today, Britain remain far and away the most avid consumers of packaged foods.
But it is not so in medicine that dry is invariably better than wet , along the road of progress.
WWII started with the military medical services of the Allies happily separating the plasma from the red cells of volunteer blood, throwing away the perfectly good and valuable red cells and then shipping the dried plasma to the combat-front to deal with fatal shock from massive wounds.
Later they realized that while the plasma did prevent immediate death from shock, a badly wounded serviceman who had lots of plasma but not enough red cells was truly over-stressing his already badly stressed heart and lungs needlessly, making survival still touch and go.
So a relatively minor administrative change (providing low tech disposable iceboxes and making liquid blood by plane transport a very top priority) allowed liquid blood to flow to the front-lines in the last year of the war - saving more lives than dry plasma could.
Concentration ,let me remind you, did not separate the tiny amounts ( ppm) of penicillin from the roughly 3% of solute solids (aka impurities) in the original gram of penicillin juice - it merely removed all the (sterile by definition) water.
But since those impurities were basically non-toxic, they were no more (and no less) harmful evaporated temporarily solid or remaining dissolved in water until they were injected.
Dignified, if alpha-male-ish, scientists do not going around saying my penis is longer than yours but they did going around saving my penicillin is purer than yours.
Which is to say, instead of concentrating penicillin purposelessly only to lose two thirds of it, they truly did purify it to a point of being between 15% to 90% pure, but at an even higher cost in terms of chemicals and labour - and penicillin - lost in the process.
But it did not save lives - it cost lives : hardly something those fine folks in Stockholm should be rewarding ....
This has become a commonplace in recent years, as a Google search on "Florey" and "concentrated" will quickly reveal, replacing earlier claims that he was the first to "purify" penicillin.
But since the solid penicillin was in fact not a whit more stable than Fleming's original liquid penicillin, if both were properly stored, it offered no advantages to Fleming's wet stuff and a whole lot of disadvantages.
Florey's team had to do a great deal of expensive and labour-intensive chemical work to reduce 3 grams of watery penicillin (containing about 6 to 12 units of biological activity in total) to one milligram of solid penicillin containing about 2 to 4 units in total.
So now, instead of saving three dying patients, only one could be selected to live and the other two had to be triaged to die prematurely.
Remind me again how this was a therapeutic improvement !
And in addition, since life-saving penicillin had to be injected not swallowed, that dry milligram of penicillin had to be dissolved back into three grams of water, to put into the human body.
It seemed a long and wasteful effort, only to end up right back where you began.
The view that anything dried was inevitably better ,"more modern", than its fresh and juicy original was common in the era between the two world wars, particularly in Florey's Britain.
British cooking in the 1920s can be practically defined by the sudden availability year around of abundant and cheap dried fruits from all over the Empire.
Even today, Britain remain far and away the most avid consumers of packaged foods.
But it is not so in medicine that dry is invariably better than wet , along the road of progress.
Unlike penicillin, WWII combat blood goes from dry back to wet ...
WWII started with the military medical services of the Allies happily separating the plasma from the red cells of volunteer blood, throwing away the perfectly good and valuable red cells and then shipping the dried plasma to the combat-front to deal with fatal shock from massive wounds.
Later they realized that while the plasma did prevent immediate death from shock, a badly wounded serviceman who had lots of plasma but not enough red cells was truly over-stressing his already badly stressed heart and lungs needlessly, making survival still touch and go.
So a relatively minor administrative change (providing low tech disposable iceboxes and making liquid blood by plane transport a very top priority) allowed liquid blood to flow to the front-lines in the last year of the war - saving more lives than dry plasma could.
Concentration ,let me remind you, did not separate the tiny amounts ( ppm) of penicillin from the roughly 3% of solute solids (aka impurities) in the original gram of penicillin juice - it merely removed all the (sterile by definition) water.
But since those impurities were basically non-toxic, they were no more (and no less) harmful evaporated temporarily solid or remaining dissolved in water until they were injected.
Dignified, if alpha-male-ish, scientists do not going around saying my penis is longer than yours but they did going around saving my penicillin is purer than yours.
Which is to say, instead of concentrating penicillin purposelessly only to lose two thirds of it, they truly did purify it to a point of being between 15% to 90% pure, but at an even higher cost in terms of chemicals and labour - and penicillin - lost in the process.
But it did not save lives - it cost lives : hardly something those fine folks in Stockholm should be rewarding ....
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