In the scientific and medical pantheon few have received more adulation and honour than Sir Alexander Fleming. Even so it is abundantly clear that his triumphant discovery of penicillin owed much to the work of others, especially Florey and Chain, who accomplished the difficult task of taking penicillin from the test tube to patient.This essay does not attempt a detailed re-examination of that discovery. Rather the present study suggests that even the initial observation on that critical day in September 1928 and its subsequent ramifications were even more complex and perplexing than the accepted version. It is likely that Professor Daniel Merlin Pryce, a somewhat unconventional but gifted son of the Welsh mining valleys played an important, quite possibly a crucial, role in that original observation. However one which, except for a very few occasions, he himself sought to downplay, even virtually to deny.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Wainwright, Milton;
(2002)
Fleming's Unfinished
Article
Kingston, William;
(2004)
Streptomycin, Schatz v. Waksman, and the Balance of Credit for Discovery
Article
Samantha Marie Copeland;
(2018)
"Fleming Leapt on the Unusual like a Weasel on a Vole": Challenging the Paradigms of Discovery in Science
Article
Gaudillière, Jean-Paul;
Gausemeier, Bernd;
(2005)
Molding National Research Systems: The Introduction of Penicillin to Germany and France
Article
Bentley, Ronald;
(2007)
Leslie A (Epstein) Falk (1915--2004) and Penicillin Production at Oxford
Chapter
Burns, Marlene;
(2009)
Scientific Research in the Second World War: The Case for Bacinol, Dutch Penicillin
Article
Becsei-Kilborn, Eva;
(2010)
Scientific Discovery and Scientific Reputation: The Reception of Peyton Rous' Discovery of the Chicken Sarcoma Virus
Article
Ariel Gershon;
Edward Shorter;
(2019)
How amytal changed psychopharmacy: off-label uses of sodium amytal (1920–40)
Book
María Jesús Santesmases;
(2017)
The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain: Health, Wealth and Authority
Article
Shama, Gilbert;
(2015)
The Role of the Media in Influencing Public Attitudes to Penicillin during World War II
Article
Sławomir Łotysz;
(2014)
A 'Lasting Memorial' to the UNRRA? Implementation of the Penicillin Plant Programme in Poland, 1946-1949
Article
Gilbert Shama;
(2017)
Miracle near 34th street: Wartime Penicillin Research at St John’s University, NY
Book
Bud, Robert;
(2007)
Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy
Article
Bud, Robert;
(2008)
Upheaval in the Moral Economy of Science? Patenting, Teamwork and the World War II Experience of Penicillin
Article
Connolly, Cynthia;
Golden, Janet;
Schneider, Benjamin;
(2012)
“A Startling New Chemotherapeutic Agent”: Pediatric Infectious Disease and the Introduction of Sulfonamides at Baltimore's Sydenham Hospital
Article
Cozzoli, Daniele;
(2014)
Penicillin and the European Response to Post-War American Hegemony: The Case of Leo-Penicillin
Article
Shama, Gilbert;
Reinarz, Jonathan;
(2002)
Allied Intelligence Reports on Wartime German Penicillin Research and Production
Article
Heynick, Frank;
(2003)
William T. G. Morton and “The Great Moment”
Book
Lee, R. Alton;
(2007)
From Snake Oil to Medicine: Pioneering Public Health
Book
Delaporte, François;
(2012)
Chagas Disease: History of a Continent's Scourge
Be the first to comment!