Didn't really know where to place this however it is an interesting subject. My daughter has just completed a project on (Australian Scientists) featuring Nobel Prize winner Sir Howard Florey and his team of research scientists at Cambridge who discovered the method to extract penicillin from mould. (That mould first discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928) Sir Howard Florey flew to the United States and convinced private and government laboratories to take on commercial production of penicillin to help wounded soldiers. Some of the facts that came out were that 95% of all wounded soldiers treated with the new wonder drug survived. Also, there was enough Penicillin manufactured to treat every participant in the D-Day landings. Any views on just how many lives and limbs (reduced gangrene) the drug saved. I know that Australia was the first country to manufacture enough to supply all Military personal and private citizens aross the country. Look forward to your views.
There is no doubt that penicillin saved many lives of the wounded that would have perished without that new drug. I was flown back from Holland in the Dakota ambulance plane, and was encased in Plaster from head to foot at Croydon RAF hospital. I was injected with penicillin every 6 hours, night and day, for some time. I had already had a "Anti gas gangerene injection" in Holland Sapper
It's true, Florey, Sir Ernest Chain, and H.D. Raistrick were the key figuries in the development of penicillin as a widespread anti-biotic, as well as Glaxo chemists Dr. B.A. Hems and A.L. Bachrach. Penicillin was the wonder drug -- infections were cut down to small fractions. While hospital admissions remained huge, deaths were way down from WW1 numbers. The US 3rd Army admitted 255,959 men to hospital from August 1944 (activation) to May 1945 (V-E Day). 117,407 were fore disease, 106,611 for injury, 31,941 as battle casualties. Only 5,120 died. (Imperial War Museum figure)
In all previous wars,infection control was a major problem and lack of it caused numerous fatalities. In addition to improved treatments to control and prevent infectionat the site of a wound, penicillin, the first antibiotic, permitted wounded troops at risk of infection and those with infected wounds for the first time to receive a treatment which could circulate. We have now reached a point through overprescription where organisms with multiple resistance are emerging, such as MRSA, meaning that in a very few years there may be no antibiotics left which can be used to treat potentially fatal infections. In addition to penicillin, onlt four other truly different antibotics have ever been discovered. The last of these discoveries was many years ago. Many of the antiboitics produced are actually derivatives of one of these five and their molecules are not so very different. The Red Army had no access to penicillin and developed a totally separate method of treating infections through bodies called microphages. This approach, though, has been rejected and neglected by western medicine. However, with the emergence of difficulties with multiple resistance, I think there is a good case for investing in microphage research. Some work on this was done in the post-WWII Soviet Union, but it never got the level of funding which the drug companies pump into potentially profitable product research.
In all previous wars,infection control was a major problem and lack of it caused numerous fatalities. If i remember right, WW1 was the first war where enemy action killed more than disease Also, Sir Alexander fleming discovered penicillium, it was Chain and florry who purified it into penicillin
Hey ho, Spidge You might want to take a shufty at the online NZ WW2 histories; it has a section on the medical services and makes reference to penicillin. http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Medi.html Of course, being a devout Kiwi you might already be familiar with this work. Richard
Originally posted by spidge@Jun 9 2005, 03:40 PM Hi Morse 1001, I named Fleming as the discoverer in my original post. [post=35151]Quoted post[/post] i was just pointing out what Sir alexander actually did. well he is a fellow Scot!
I believe penicillin was very helpful in getting lots of Allied soldiers who had caught a STD back into front line service quickly. This caused a bit of a furore with senior Army officers at the time since medicine was being used to treat these self-inflicted wounds rather than casualties caused by enemy action. I’m sure there was a BBC2 ‘Timewatch’ programme about penicillin a few years ago on the subject of just how vital the medicine was to the Allied war effort. I think this programme also highlighted that the Second World War was the first war where more British soldiers died from enemy action than from disease. This includes the First World War because so many died from diseases, flu and a great many from infected wounds. I stand to be corrected on this though since my memory may be playing tricks. A very important point the programme made was that without the mass production of penicillin in the USA from an early part of the war there would not have been nearly enough produced in Britain alone to sustain the campaigns of 1944 - 45.
Penicillin was also produced in the UK. I would need to dig out some old local history stuff, but I am sure that the Royal Navy operated a production facility here where I live.
I believe penicillin was very helpful in getting lots of Allied soldiers who had caught a STD back into front line service quickly. it was still that way inthe eighties and most people what it meant when someone mentioned the "penicillian" word. in belize, it was joked that rather put the names of the squaddies who were attending the STD clinic in part one orders, it would be better to put the names of those who were not attending it! My unit was going across to Denmark by ferry and in the ships Disco, it was that time of night when peoples minds where turning to thoughts of heading for either their or someones elses bed. Our young Cranwell trained Co had employed all of his air force skills and was looking lovingly into the eyes of some young female. I walked across and introduced myself as the medic to the youg lady and then turned to my boss and said, "if you want to pop round to my cabin at 0900, then i'll give you your penicillian jab"! As I walked away with a big smile on my face, I could hear my CO shouting with a note of frustration in his voice, "I'll get you back for that you b****d"!
