| Description |
389 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm |
| Summary |
"Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin while examining a stray mould in his London laboratory in 1928, and its eventual development by a team at Oxford University headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, led to the introduction of antibiotics: the most important family of drugs of the modern era. Before World War II ended, penicillin had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Almost immediately it also defeated major bacterial scourges, such as blood poisoning and pneumonia, scarlet fever and diphtheria, gonorrhea and syphillis - and, not incidentally, helped to foster a sexual revolution as well as a medical one." |
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"Neither Fleming nor Florey ever made a cent from their achievements (though Fleming, Florey, and Chain did share a Nobel Prize). Nor did the British pharmaceutical companies grasp the potential of this new drug when it was first presented to them; instead it was the American labs - Merck, Abbot, Pfizer - who won patents on penicillin's manufacture and drew enormous royalties from its sale. Why it took twelve years to develop penicillin, and how it was finally accomplished, is a story of quirky individuals, brilliant science, shoestring research, wartime adventures, the birth of big-time drug companies, and the dramatic passage of medicine from one era to the next."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Bibliography, pages [365]-368 |
| Subject |
Florey, Howard, Baron Florey, 1898-1968.
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Fleming, Alexander, Sir, 1881-1955.
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Chain, Ernst Boris, 1906-1979.
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Heatley, Norman George, 1911-
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Penicillin -- History -- Popular works.
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Penicillin -- History.
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Penicillins -- history.
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| ISBN |
0316859257 hardback |
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