1942 · [St. Albans]
by Fleming, Alexander
[St. Albans]: printed by Fisher, Knight at the Gainsborough Press], 1942. Offprint from the British Medical Journal, approx. 8½" x 5½", pp. 5, [1]; 1 table and 1 illustration in the text; self-wrappers; fine. With small rubberstamp at the top reading "With the author's compliments." Fleming discovered penicillin in March 1929 but his discovery was largely ignored. "As late as in 1936, there was no appreciation for penicillin. When Fleming talked of its medical importance at the Second International Congress of Microbiology held in London no one believed him ... In 1941, the British Medical Journal reported that '[Penicillin] does not appear to have been considered as possibly useful from any other point of view' ... After the team [including Ernst Chain and Howard Florey] had developed a method of purifying penicillin to an effective first stable form in 1940, several clinical trials ensued, and their amazing success inspired the team to develop methods for mass production and mass distribution in 1945 ... The discovery of penicillin and its subsequent development as a prescription drug mark the start of modern antibiotics" for which he, together with Chain and Florey, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945. (Wikipedia). Wellcome Library only in OCLC.
(Inventory #: 60769)