Do you know who were Howard Florey and Ernst Chain?
Well if you have ever taken any antibiotics then you should know them!
Now do not throw Alexander Fleming at me! His observation that a mold, Penicillium notatum, was capable of killing bacteria in a petri dish was the spark that started this fire!
But Fleming actually struggled to purify the substance and abandoned his research! Yes! It would have been a full stop there to one of the most prescribed medications and possibly the best medication available to the doctors worldwide!
Minor infection would be fatal and many surgeries would not be possible if Florey and Chain had not continued what Fleming started and stopped!
In 1935, Australian pathologist Howard Florey became the head of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University. He assembled a team of scientists with varied expertise and launched a major project to investigate antibacterial substances. One of Florey’s key recruits was German-born biochemist Ernst Chain, who had fled the Nazi regime.
Chain’s expertise was vital to the team’s success, and it was he who rediscovered Fleming’s 1929 paper on penicillin!
Which is why I always say, YOU MUST READ!
Working together, Florey, Chain, and their team, including chemist Edward Abraham and technician Norman Heatley, developed a technique for purifying and concentrating penicillin. Their process used gallons of mold broth to produce a small but potent amount of a yellowish-brown powder!
Now remember Norman Heatley! He was also pivotal in the development and he is often said to be the unsung hero of the Penicillin story!
The team proved penicillin’s effectiveness in animal tests. In a critical experiment, they injected eight mice with a lethal dose of bacteria. The four mice treated with penicillin survived, while the untreated mice died!
Human trials (1941): The first human patient was an Oxford policeman suffering from a severe bacterial infection. His condition dramatically improved after penicillin treatment, but he relapsed and died when the team’s limited supply ran out. This tragic experience led Florey to focus on treating children, who required smaller quantities of the drug.
With war raging, Florey and a colleague traveled to the U.S. in 1941 to secure assistance for large-scale production. The U.S. government took over the project, and with American and British collaboration, penicillin was mass-produced in time to save thousands of Allied soldiers during the D-Day invasion!
In 1945, Fleming, Florey, and Chain shared the Nobel Prize for their work on penicillin.
By making penicillin a mass-producible drug, Florey and Chain’s work dramatically reduced mortality from infectious diseases and how!
Then again those days it was told that a single prick was fatal!
But now with the rampant and blind use of antibiotics in non indicated situations and without prescription along with poly pharmacy; that future with full antibiotic resistance may not be so far!
So if you want to make future safe for your kids, make sure you do not take antibiotics like peppermint pills! On that note, do not take too much peppermint pills also! Speaking of kids reminds me of the illustrious father of two famous kids; Sivakumar!
Really happy with this sketch!
Now stop popping those unnecessary pills and sleep!
SHubh ratri!
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