The story of Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, having twice saved Winston Churchill’s life may be bit of hyperbole and over-enthusiasm on the part of the press in the past (see ‘Luck of the Irish’), but there’s some interesting features to the whole story of the development of penicillin.

I always thought the story was that a petri-dish growing Staphylococcus

Aureus was left out on the bench, and the lab assistant, and not Fleming, noted there was no growth where a mold had grown. But apparently that’s not true, according to the book ‘Penicillin Man’ by Kevin Brown.                                                                                                               Some Perks of the Drug

Apparently Fleming was a bit of a clutter-aholic (see post Clutter Addiction). His tidy colleagues would clean and sterilize their petri-dishes immediately, but not Fleming. “His usual practice was to leave them for weeks, until the bench was overcrowded”. On this infamous day, Monday the 3^rd of September 1928, he was returning from 4 weeks holiday - and the cultures of Staph Aureus had been sitting in an enamel basin all this time.

The postulation is that a mold spore of some kind of penicillium had found its way up from the lab of a mycologist working on the floor below, and had caused what caught Fleming’s attention - that there was a zone of inhibition of the bacterial growth around where the mold was growing.

So, being a slob paid off.

Penicillin Mania

Later, when it was found that penicillin could produce miraculous cures - in people who formerly would be bound to die, it was hailed as a miracle and penicillin mania took hold.

It was suggested that it be put in tooth paste to “put an end to dental decay”, or in lipstick to “kiss whom you like, when you like, where you like and avoid all consequences - except matrimony” (that brings to mind the other cynical quote about matrimony, who’s source I don’t know, that “for men the price of sex is matrimony. For women the price of matrimony is sex”).

On the sexual theme, one interesting issue that cropped up with the troops in WWII was that penicillin might be a wonder drug, and could cure people of wound infections, which formerly they would die from (in the first World War and the American Civil War, the majority of deaths were from infections, not direct injuries), but it was in very short supply.

The other disease it was found to be a very effective treatment for was gonorrhea.

So the authorities were faced with this dilemma. Treat the miserable bastard who had become incapacitated by virtue of his lust - but who could be put back into action in just a few days with some penicillin. Or treat the war hero with his infected wound - but who would still need weeks or months of recovery even once the infection was cured.

A Cynical Postscript

Maybe it is not fare to fault these protagonists of penicillin for not seeing that the bacteria are smarter than we are - although Fleming had reservations, and knew that they have a great capacity to mutate. But in this day and age, just plain penicillin is almost useless, due to drug resistant bacteria.

It didn’t take long for Staph. Aureus to develop resistance to penicillin. So a variation, Methicillin, was invented. Well then it became resistant to that - and we had Methicillin-Resistant Staph Aureus, or MRSA - that everyone now lives in fear of.

MRSA is bad news, and is putting the fear of god into nursing homes and schools, but was always curable with vancomycin - a fairly heavy duty antibiotic that has to be given intravenously. However, in 1997 a hospital in Tokyo reported a strain of Staph Aureus  that was resistant even to vancomycin.

Resistance to antibiotics can be attributed to overuse. Incredibly, “70 percent of antibiotics used in the developed world are given to farm animals … simply to promote growth” notes Bill Bryson’s great book ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’. And any primary care provider will tell you of the recurrent wrangles they have with their patients - who are insisting they have to have antibiotics for their upper respiratory tract infection, which the doctor knows is caused by a virus (and I wonder if this unquestioning faith in antibiotics isn’t still a throwback from the penicillin mania days).

It’s not just the patients that have the unquestioning faith. Not so long ago it was the authorities as well. In the early 60’s, U.S. Surgeon General declared “the time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection from the United States”

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