World Famous Comics: The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle
The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle
By: Eric Lax Publisher: Holt Paperbacks Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Holt Paperbacks Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 336 Publication Date: February 01, 2005 Release Date: December 23, 2004
Product Description: "Admirable, superbly researched . . . perhaps the most exciting tale of science since the apple dropped on Newton's head." —Simon Winchester, The New York Times
Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in his London laboratory in 1928 and its eventual development as the first antibiotic by a team at Oxford University headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain in 1942 led to the introduction of the most important family of drugs of the twentieth century.
Yet credit for penicillin is largely misplaced. Neither Fleming nor Florey and his associates ever made real money from their achievements; instead it was the American labs that won patents on penicillin's manufacture and drew royalties from its sale. Why this happened, why it took fourteen years to develop penicillin, and how it was finally done is a fascinating story of quirky individuals, missed opportunities, medical prejudice, brilliant science, shoestring research, wartime pressures, misplaced modesty, conflicts between mentors and their protégés, and the passage of medicine from one era to the next.
Not a miracle but a product of nature and human effort I am a biochemist and spent a major portion of my career studying beta-lactam antibiotics (the class that includes penicillin). I thought I knew this story pretty well, but when I saw "The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat" on a remnant table at a remarkably low price, I had to have it. I was a little put off by the subtitle ("The Story of the Penicillin Miracle"), since scientists are generally uncomfortable with the word "miracle," and indeed the book demonstrates that the penicillin "miracle" was a product of nature and a lot of very human endeavor. When I got around to reading the book, what a pleasant surprise! It is extremely readable, well written, and generally easy to follow (despite the many characters and numerous twists and turns of the plot), and it is meticulously researched and annotated. There are quite a few minor scientific inaccuracies, which do not seriously affect the story but could have been corrected by a competent scientific editor. Other reviewers have covered the story pretty well, so I will focus on only a couple of points. The author suggests that Florey has been somehow neglected by history, but--come on!--he shared the Nobel Prize, was elected to the Royal Society (became president even), knighted, etc. Scientists seldom if ever get more attention than that! If you put yourself in the position of the Nobel committee, it was pretty obvious that the discovery and development of penicillin were worthy of the Prize; the problem was in assigning credit to individuals. It is hard to imagine how they could have justified awarding the Prize to Florey, but not Fleming, and vice versa. It was Fleming's publication, then about ten years old, that caught the attention of Florey and his team, after all. Yet Fleming dropped the project, which might never have come to fruition but for Florey. And clearly many players had critical roles, so the logic of including a third awardee was undeniable. The Prize can be shared by a maximum of three individuals; Heatley was subordinate to Chain; Chain was the third; end of story. Heatley did have the satisfaction of outliving his more famous, and more Type-A, colleagues, and in time received significant honors. To me, the real scientific majesty of the penicillin story lies in the discovery of its molecular structure and mechanism of action. The structure gets precisely two paragraphs in this entire book; the mechanism was not elucidated until much later. Abraham and Chain daringly proposed a structure that was considered wildly improbable by most chemists at the time, but which was proven correct by another Nobelist, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. I have to believe that an author of Eric Lax's talent could turn this tale of astonishing scientific beauty and intellectual elegance into a story that would engage the interest of a lay audience. I wish he had tried.
Great addition to the history of medicine This is an excellent book that covers the development of Penicillin during world war II and the interwar years. Dr. Fleming was the first to discover the penicillin properties but never really was able to develop it. He would wind up with much of the credit and the Nobel Prize but the real work went to Dr. Florey and his research lab at oxford. They took the penicillin broth and turned it into the injections and powders that saved countless lives during World War II. It was American production that as the other big winner in the Penicillin story as they were able to produce over a billion mold spores that saved forty thousand lives in a short period of time. Penicillin was tirelessly publicized after production, and was a credit to Florey's efforts. This is a well written insightful analysis that shows how the drug was developed and the wonders of World War II production. It is a great addition to the history of medicine and a very quick read. Highly recommend.
An Untold Story You Thought You Knew Flemming invented Penicillin. I always thought that. But it isn't so. Never was so - though he was one of the first to find that it might be useful. Howard Florey and others on his team invented it and got far less plublicity than Flemming. And it required many years even in the scientific community for them to get the recognition they deserved. But I found only a few if any 'bad guys' in the end. The story is far more interesting and complicated than that. (Even the word - Penicillin - means two things, a chemical discovered and a chemical invented.)There are human personalities that did and then did not work well together; who perhaps, perhaps not, took more credit than they deserved. Eric Lax leaves the reader to decide after telling his story. Though it is written for the general reader,this should be required reading for any American History Course - High School History Course! It was in high school after all where I 'learned' that Flemming invented Penicillin.
The Full Story of Penicillin Many people associate Alexander Fleming with Pencillin. However, if it were not for Dr's Florey and Chain, Penicillin would not have come into use until much later, certainly too late for WWII. The way the author presents the story is very readable and not dry. The author does not get too technical but yet brings in enough science to satisfy the lay person with an interest in science.
Ok, the textbooks need to change! Like most other students in medicine of any kind, especially those of us with a predeliction for books and information about viruses, bacteria, and our 'failing' fight against them, I was under the impression that Fleming discovered penicillin. I guess you could still say that, but he sat on it for over 10 years and never did have much to do with its development as an antibiotic. Typical. Our textbooks are inaccurate because in the rush to make money off of textbooks, publishers don't bother to actually use people who know the history of medicine, to research and read what is known now about such situations as the development of penicillin. Like the exclusion of Rosalind Franklin from recognition of her very valuable part in the understanding of the DNA molecule (thanks a lot to Watson), in most medical histories or books that med students read, Franklin's name never comes up.
Same thing with Florey, and the many other young men such as Chain and Heatley...these guys never received credit for the immense work they did in developing penicillin. It is not enough to find something. Many people discover things everyday, things that could be useable, things that are important...but the 'prepared mind' must be accompanied by plain old work ethics, even grubby work, repetitious work.
I was interested to see how much the pharmaceutical industry has changed, and medical universities along with it. Everyone is out for the money now. The thought of doing the right thing, and sharing information, sharing technology in order to save lives, rather than merely to make a profit seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird.
A very interesting book. I hope that others will read and use Lax's book, especially in setting the textbooks right, and getting these men and women the credit they are due. I also think it may be time to possibly set up another committee, such as the one that awards the Nobel prize, only this time, make it so that even those who are dead are recognized for their enormous contribution to medicine. The prize money can go to their families or institutions or charities. That's the least important part of all this...to encourage other young people to spend years working on possible solutions to current plagues like AIDS and Alzheimer's, they need to see that other researchers are recognized, and that mentorship has rewards outside and beyond monetary awards.
Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh
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