Fwd: [wiley58] HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Sir Alexander Fleming lauds commercial solvents
Rob Robbins
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Sir Alexander Fleming lauds commercial solvents
Mike McCormick Special to the Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE — Sir
Alexander Fleming, the Scottish biologist who discovered penicillin and received
the Nobel Prize in Medicine, visited the Commercial Solvents plant in Terre
Haute during a two-day visit to the city in June 1945.
“There is not
better plant in the country, or the world,” Fleming asserted during a press
conference on June 8, 1945. “I wanted to visit the best first.”
Sir
Alexander complimented Maj. T.P. Walker, president of Commercial Solvents, and
Vice President Maynard C. Wheeler for the “wonderful job” the company was doing
as the driving force in the production of the “wonder drug.”
Fleming also
lauded Walker, Wheeler and others for “the miraculous way in which the Terre
Haute plant was built and placed into production in 180 days.”
“It is the
finest factory of any of which I have any knowledge,” he added.
Fleming
was accompanied on his visit to this city by John Cameron of the British Supply
Mission.
The men arrived by train on June 8 and were immediately taken on
an inspection tour of the penicillin plant. During the afternoon Fleming held
informal meetings with CSC officers and employees.
Penicillin was
produced at the Terre Haute plant from direct descendants of the original
culture. Fleming carried with him a sample under glass of the first culture he
found. Sir Alexander discovered penicillin in September 1928 while investigating
the properties of staphylococci.
Already known as a brilliant researcher
and for the discovery of the enzyme lysozyme, Fleming stacked cultures of
staphylococci in small glass dishes on a bench in the corner of his laboratory
before departing on vacation in August 1928.
Upon his return on Sept. 3,
he noticed that one culture plate was contaminated with a foreign fungus and
that the colonies of staphylococci surrounding it were destroyed. Fleming grew
the mold into a pure culture and discovered it killed many disease-carrying
bacteria, including pathogens that cause scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis
and diphtheria.
Apparently the wind had transported the foreign mold into
his laboratory.
Fleming published his findings in the British “Journal of
Experimental Pathology” in 1929 but little attention was paid to his
work.
Fleming worked 12 years trying to cultivate penicillin but finally
abandoned his efforts after unsuccessfully trying to interest other scientists.
Soon after he did, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain of the Radcliffe Infirmary in
Oxford took up the work and, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, began mass
producing it.
When Chain and Florey published the results of their
studies, Fleming contacted Florey and joined the pair in London. Fleming was
modest about his part of the development of the antibiotic and praised Florey
and Chain for transforming a “laboratory curiosity” into a practical
drug.
Since he was the first to discover the properties of the fungus,
Fleming had the privilege of naming it “penicillin.” His isolation of the drug
marked the beginning of modern antibiotics.
The drug has saved, and
continues to save, millions around the world.
During World War II a fable
proliferated that Sir Winston Churchill’s father paid for Sir Alexander’s
education after Fleming’s father, Hugh Fleming, saved the life of young Winston
Churchill. The myth has been resurrected by the thousands of people who dispense
falsehoods on the Internet.
Fleming was given the Award of Merit by the
American Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association in 1943 and was knighted in
1944. Fleming, Florey and Chain jointly received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in
1945.
In 1999, Time Magazine named Fleming one of the 100 Most Important
People of the 20th Century for his discovery, stating:
“It was a
discovery that would change the course of history. The active ingredient of that
mould, which Fleming named penicillin, turned out to be an infection-fighting
agent of enormous potency. When it finally was recognized for what it was, the
most efficacious life-saving drug in the world, penicillin would alter forever
the treatment of bacterial infections.
“Fleming’s discovery had spawned a
huge pharmaceutical industry, churning out synthetic penicillins that would
conquer some of mankind’s most ancient scourges, including syphilis, gangrene
and tuberculosis.”
Sir Alexander arrived in the U.S. from England by boat
on June 1, 1945.
When asked why he did not fly, he replied:
“Why
fly when there is no need? If you go too fast, you die too young and I do not
want to die too young.”
Upon leaving Terre Haute on June 9, he planned to
visit several penicillin plants before returning to England. He regretted being
unable to visit the West Coast:
“God made America too big,” he joked.
“And three days on a train are not like three days on a boat.”
Fleming
and Cameron expressed strong interest in the deep fermentation method of
producing penicillin. Commercial Solvents was able to produce quantities in one
vat which far exceeded the capability of production by the bottle fermentation
method.
“People have called penicillin a miracle drug,” Fleming told
local news reporters. “As a scientist, I agree. It is a miracle which will save
lives by the thousands.”
Though penicillin far exceeded his expectations,
Fleming was not planning to rest on his laurels.
“I am going to look for
other molds,” he promised. “There are still some microbes out there which are
unaffected by the drug. Perhaps there is another one out there with equal
potency.”
Sir Alexander Fleming died, at age 73, at his home in London on
March 11, 1955.
~Catherine Pulsifer~
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