“Other Observations on Penicillin.”
Is this, then, British phlegm?
On August 16, 1941, in these words of absolute sobriety, a team of Oxford researchers described in
The Lancet
nothing less than… the very first use of antibiotics in humans.
Either one of the main medical revolutions of the
20th century!
In 1939, more than ten years ago Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin and demonstrated its antibacterial action.
He is not quite the first, but the difficulties in purifying the substance from molds, and the (relative) success of sulfonamides, relegate to anonymity the results published by the London university in the
British Journal of Experimental pathology
.
At least until the German chemist, Ernst Chain, and the one who recently recruited him at Oxford, the Australian professor of pathology Howard Florey, became interested in it.
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They want to test this promising substance, but first they have to successfully extract and…
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