...thank you Oxford and a stiff dose of irony
Advertisement for penicillin in Life Magazine by an unknown artist, August 14, 1944 issue. Image: National World War II Museum
As I mentioned in the first of these blogs on penicillin, the drug was discovered in 1928. However, its value and potential were not recognised or exploited until 1939. That date, the year that the Second World War began, is not coincidental. It was the threat of impending war which caused research into manufacturing antibacterial agents to be given higher priority. That work was done at the Dunn School of Pathology, at Oxford University.
Plaque on the Dunn School of Pathology, OX1 3RE. Not open to the public.
At the city end of the Woodstock Road. The building is no longer a hospital
It was largely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and led by Oxford's Professor of Pathology, Howard Florey (an Australian) and a member of his staff, Ernst Chain. Chain was 'one of Hitler's gifts to Britain', that is a senior German scientist with Jewish ancestry who had fled the Nazis' murder machine.
Clinical trials in 1940 showed just how powerful penicillin was. When it was purified, prepared and injected into animals (including humans), it did exactly what it had done on Fleming's Petri dish; it killed off harmful bacteria that would often otherwise kill the animal. This realisation came just as the Dunkirk evacuation of the British army from France was taking place. It's arrival was more than timely; there were suddenly a lot of seriously wounded soldiers, sailors and airmen. Staff at the Dunn School worked feverishly to produce the drug in quantity. In charge of this work was Norman Heatley (an Englishman who arguably had just as good a claim on the Nobel Prize as Fleming, Florey or Chain). This incredibly difficult task started to come to fruition in 1941. Priority for penicillin's use was given at first to downed, often horrendously burned, RAF pilots.
This was, of course, at a time when a German invasion of Britain seemed extremely likely. Florey and some of his colleagues were so worried that they smeared spores of the penicillin-producing fungus inside the linings of their coats, in case they had to destroy all the cultures and take to the hills (such as they are) around Oxford. Having walked these hills many times, I can assure you that they would have posed few problems for the German army.
Penicillin was to save the lives of countless British, American and Russian soldiers during the war. In July 1944, it is thought to have saved the life of the greatest Nazi of the lot – Hitler himself. Some of Hitler's generals (rather belatedly) decided to blow him up. To do so, they used plastic explosive, a British invention, which they had confiscated from Allied troops. To treat Hitler's wounds his doctor (Morell) used another British invention; penicillin.
Churchill, too, had been saved by a modern miracle drug. That had happened 6 months earlier, in December 1943, when the British Prime Minister had developed pneumonia on one of his many overseas trips. At 69, a heavy smoker and drinker, the prognosis did not look bright for him. But he responded to treatment from (in his words): “this admirable M&B”. This was M&B 693, a sulfa antibacterial drug manufactured in England by May & Baker Ltd. What is ironical is that the forerunner of that drug was Prontosil, which I talked about in my previous blog. This, you may remember, had been developed by the German Gerhard Domagk; who had tested it out on his daughter. He had received the Nobel Prize in 1939 for his work (not that Hitler would let him out of the country to claim it; a previous German winner had said something nasty about the Fuhrer, so Adolf sent Domagk to a concentration camp for a little further education).
Hitler cured by a British medical breakthrough; Churchill by a German one. Sometimes history is so bitterly ironical that one could almost believe there is someone up there (or down there) laughing at us. On the other hand, it proves that medicine pays little heed to race or national boundaries. If only man would learn the same lesson!
Of the two drugs, penicillin and Prontosil, penicillin would prove to be by far the most important. Prontosil (a sulfonamide) has largely been replaced by other antibiotics, largely penicillin, which has less side effects.
By the 1990s, there was enough penicillin in existence to allow a 5 gram dose for every man, woman and child on the planet. It has saved humanity from much pain, suffering and early death. To take Britain as an example, the average lifespan has increased from about 60 to about 80 since the war. In many other countries, the rise has been even more dramatic. The Grim Reaper may not have been conquered, but his visit has been postponed. Take, for example, the fact that the average number of children born to a British family is in 2024 less than 2, while it was 5 or 6 in Victorian times. The tragedy of child death, once commonplace, as a look in any churchyard will prove, is now rare. This is largely thanks to antibiotics of which penicillin is still the most important. Thank you Fleming, Florey, Chain and Heatley and Oxford University's Dunn School of Pathology.
I am fortunate that one of the readers of my book The Intelligence Zone, Linda Petzing, contacted me about penicillin. She sent me a photo of her dad. He's the one in the middle, holding the Red Cross flag. It was taken on D Day, on Gold Beach, in a brief pause while unloading medical supplies. Linda told me:
'My late father used copious amounts (of penicillin) treating casualties on D Day and beyond. After hostilities ceased they were shocked at the level of deaths and infections when they took over German hospitals as the army of occupation.'
There are millions of cases where lives have been saved, or enhanced, by penicillin. For instance, when I visited the History of Science Museum at Oxford in my research, Chris, one of the curators, told me about his father who had suffered two leg infections while serving in India and Burma during the war. Both arose from infections due to insect bites. On both occasions, he was treated with penicillin and returned to the battle front. On the second occasion, the medics had considered amputation but cured the wound with penicillin instead. Chris's dad lived to be 97. Thanks penicillin. Your results are everywhere. Many who read this would never have been born without 'the miracle drug'.
History of Science Museum Oxford
There is an exhibition dealing with penicillin at Oxford, at the above mentioned History of Science Museum. It's free! The exhibition is quite small; but there's plenty more to see there. The building itself, next to the Bodleian library, is a treasure dating from 1683. Add to that astrolabes, part of Babbage's Difference Engine (an early step towards computing), the slate where Einstein drew up equations on one of his many visits to Oxford, Good Queen Bess's astrolabe and lots more besides. There's even three flights of stairs to keep your legs in trim. Wonderful (though no public loos!).
As an aside, when I turned up, unannounced, at the Dunn School of Pathology to learn more penicillin, I was courteously shown around by Chris Tang. This was, had I but known it, a bit like knocking on the door at the Bank of England and being shown round by a governor. Thank you Professor Tang.
©Alan Biggins April 2024
ps There are a lot more blogs; and a lot more about me, my books and the museums which have helped me on this website. If you want to know more about my books and how they are regarded, follow the link to Amazon here
pps I don't normally put source notes on a blog, but...
If you want to understand the history of Prontosil and the sulfa drugs, I suggest you read this article from the Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology.
My thanks to Ronald Bentley, who wrote it, and made this complex subject understandable
and if you want to know a bit more about Hitler's doctor, Morell, using penicillin on Adolf's wounds after the July plot – I suggest that you start with the Royal College of Physician's (Edinburgh) report 'Adolf Hitler's medical care', which is online here
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