“Applying [Pasteur’s] principles”: (Thagard, 1996)
“the importance of the fact”: (Lister, 1967)
“the tissue cells of man”: (Jacobs, 1924)
the three Englishmen to make the cut: (Lawrence, 2004)
“all the worse for the fishes”: (Holmes, The Writings, 1899) The origi-nal appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Medicine 18, no. 2, 163.
TWO: “Patience, Skill, Luck, and Money”
a technique used by the Lapps: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
the Harben Lectures given: (Witkop, 1999)
no qualms about partnerships: (Hager, 2006)
“an absolutely characteristic behavior”: (Crivellato, 2003)
“the man with blue . . . fingers”: (Hager, 2006)
Ehrlich had written a paper: (Volansky, 2009)
“I must . . . be no longer”: (Witkop, 1999)
recognized by the Nobel committee: (Witkop, 1999)
“a biologically effective substance”: (Riethmiller, 1999)
“uniform direction of research”: (Van den Belt, 1997)
“often hammered on the anvil”: (Van den Belt, 1997)
“endless combination game”: (Van den Belt, 1997)
The atoxyl experiments were among: (Bosch, 2008)
test versions on rabbits, monkeys: (Van den Belt, 1997)
Desiderius Erasmus called it: (Rolleston, 1934)
“A night with Venus”: (Frith, 2012)
“communities of interest”: (Van den Belt, 1997)
The motto of Ehrlich’s lab: (Hager, 2006)
“The material and mental support”: (Van den Belt, 1997)
tended to introduce impurities: (Lloyd, 2005)
a magic buckshot: (Witkop, 1999)
more than 29,000 wounded: (Keegan, 1998)
onetime medical student: (Hager, 2006)
Carl Duisberg, the managing director: (Hager, 2006)
the bacteriologist exposed them: (Hager, 2006)
“By 1930 it was the universal opinion”: (Galdston, 1943)
cured strep infections in mice: (Colebrook, “Gerhard Domagk,” 1964)
“I had rather that those I esteemed”: (Holmes, The Writings, 1899)
attacking up to three hundred: (Maeder, 1994)
mortality from childbed fever: (Hager, 2006)
sold in France by Poulenc as Stovarsol: (Ravina, 2011) Stovarsol, like Fourneau’s cocaine derivative, which he named Stovaine, were plays on his own name. Fourneau, in English, means “furnace.”
“I only had seven new products”: (Hager, 2006)
“the German chemists’ patents”: (Hager, 2006)
original documents remain sealed away: (Hager, 2006)
a Japanese version was named: (Hager, 2006)
“I remember the astonishment”: (Thomas, 1983)
the title of a book he wrote in 1929: (Carpenter, 2010)
number of advertised compounds: (Carpenter, 2010)
“Persenico” promised to combat: (Carpenter, 2010)
had no fraudulent intent: (Maeder, 1994)
“VENEREAL DISEASE ‘CURE’ KILLS”: (Carpenter, 2010)
“nationwide race with death”: (New York Times, October 25, 1937)
the existing law only allowed: (Carpenter, 2010)
Massengill eventually pleaded: (Maeder, 1994)
extended the “misbranding” violation: (Temin, 1980)
from 27 percent to 8 percent: (Hager, 2006)
“too polite to the Swedes”: (Hager, 2006)
a 90 percent cure rate: (Hager, 2006)
THREE: “Play with Microbes”
Dr. Leo Schutzmacher . . . “dying of it”: (Shaw, 1947)
“Jurisprudence and International Law”: (Colebrook, “Almroth Edward Wright: 1861–1947,” 1948)
On Praed Street: (Heaman, 2004)
a quarter of a million lines of poetry: (Dunhill, 2000)
“The physician of the future”: (Colebrook, “Almroth Edward Wright: 1861–1947,” 1948)
“to exploit the uninfected tissues”: (Colebrook, “Almroth Edward Wright: 1861–1947,” 1948)
“by uniting with the micro-organisms”: (New York Times, March 31, 1907)
only twelve hundred soldiers died of it: (Colebrook, “Almroth Edward Wright: 1861–1947,” 1948)
in a now-classic paper written for the Lancet: (Fleming, “Some Notes on the Bacteriology,” 1915)
Fifteen percent of battlefield wounds: (Lax, 2004)
“that dissolved or killed the microbes”: (Root-Bernstein, Discovering, 1989)
Fleming later revealed: (Hughes, 1979) and (Root-Bernstein, Discovering, 1989)
“On the Antibacterial Action”: (Fleming, “On the Antibacterial Action,” 1929)
the effect was observed after only two: (Lax, 2004)
created images . . . on Petri dishes: (Root-Bernstein, Discovering, 1989)
“his enjoyment came from games of all kinds”: (Macfarlane, Alexander Fleming, 1984)
Fleming’s penchant for games: (Root-Bernstein, “How Scientists Really Think,” 1987)
a new source for lysozyme: This remains a minority opinion, even now, but is persuasively made in (Root-Bernstein, Discovering, 1989), to which I owe a great deal.
“Penicillin was not the first”: (Fleming, “Penicillin,” 1945)
“a thick blanket of Penicillium”: (Clark, 1985)
predictably enough, Gram-negative: (Weidel, 2009) It wasn’t until the 1960s, however, that anyone figured out why: The cell walls of all bacteria are composed of amino acids and sugars in a sort of mesh, a macromolecule known originally as murein, later as peptidoglycan. Some bacteria, however, have, in addition, an outer membrane made up of sugars and fats, formally a lipopolysaccharide, which sloughs off the violet stain.
Gram-positive/Gram-negative distinction: (Woese, 1987)
“All Fleming had to do”: (Clark, 1985)
“The trouble of making it”: (Abraham, “Howard Walter Florey,” 1971)
“we knew very little”: (Maurois, 1959)
“a first-rate man”: (Abraham, “Howard Walter Florey,” 1971)
“a rather nasty product”: (Lax, 2004)
“make the peaks higher”: (Jonas, 1989)
“future leaders in science”: (Jonas, 1989)
“not a physically normal woman”: (Lax, 2004)
“experiment a day, including Sundays”: (Abraham, “Howard Walter Florey,” 1971)
Britain’s first Standards Laboratory: (Lax, 2004) and (Douglas, 1935)
Royal Charter that authorized collaboration: (Rasmussen, “The Moral Economy,” 2004) and (Swann, Academic Scientists, 1988)
in a pure form from egg whites: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
a factory that produced pure elements: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
“paid or unpaid employment”: (Lax, 2004)
a stipend of £250 annually: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
“inexhaustible flow of ideas”: (Clark, 1985)
quote page and volume: (Clark, 1985)
“his race and foreign origin”: (Clark, 1985)
“principal motivating principle”: (Clark, 1985)
“One! I shall want ten!”: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
“caused a terrific upheaval”: (Clark, 1985)
“periodic fear attacks”: (Lax, 2004)
“the chemical aspect of Pathology”: (Lax, 2004)
“balances, micro balances”: (Lax, 2004)
“I was a third-rate scientist”: (Moberg, 1991)
“was wholly my conception and design”: (Lax, 2004)
“Steel-bearing balls”: (Heatley, 1939)
“Something seemed
to click”: (Clark, 1985)
Florey was equally insistent: (Lax, 2004)
“impracticable to grow”: (Clark, 1985)
“a most versatile, ingenious”: (Macfarlane, Howard Florey, 1979)
“He could improvise”: (Macfarlane, Howard Florey, 1979)
“I have struggled to keep”: (Lax, 2004)
“The application of Florey”: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
Chain, as a refugee: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
came through with only £25: (Lax, 2004)
he later called “laughably simple”: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
no better than .02 percent pure: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
“preparation from certain bacteria”: (Clark, 1985)
“beautiful working hypothesis”: (Clark, 1985)
“one mouse got up and staggered”: (Abraham, “Howard Walter Florey,” 1971)
“root and core and brain”: (Churchill, 2002) This speech—the “We shall fight on the beaches” speech—was given before the House of Commons by the prime minister on June 4, 1940.
FOUR: “The People’s Department”
a variety of purification techniques: (Clark, 1985)
the Dunn’s elevator shut down: (Lax, 2004)
“In recent years . . . inhibited in vitro”: (Chain, 1940)
“What [penicillin’s] chemical nature is”: (Lax, 2004)
“with my old penicillin”: (Lax, 2004)
“I shall be surprised”: (Lax, 2004) and (Macfarlane, Howard Florey, 1979)
“very undesirable that the Swiss”: (Clark, 1985)
“I sympathize with your position”: (Clark, 1985)
but the contaminants: (Clark, 1985) The process, pioneered by E. P. Abraham, involved successively exposing the filtrate to different powders that were attracted to distinct pigments in the fluid, then washing it in aluminum oxide until a powder appeared.
“was oozing pus everywhere”: (Lax, 2004) A thank you to Mr. Lax, whose lively narrative informs many parts of this chapter.
closing in on a trillion dollars: (Maddison, 2006) Angus Maddison’s indispensable tables calculating centuries’ worth of world economic performance use an economic standard known as a “Geary-Khamis dollar,” which is essentially the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar at a given point in time; in this case, the year 1990.
U.S. steelmakers rolled out: (Committee on Statistics, 1981) and (Woytinsky, 1953)
“some American mold or yeast raiser”: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
“I have come to the conclusion”: (Clark, 1985)
“scientific methods in strengthening”: (National Academies, 2007)
corrected Fleming’s misidentification: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
“It is precisely the people’s Department”: www.nal.usda.gov/lincolns-agricultural-legacy
“surplus agricultural commodities”: (Finlay, 1990)
By 1944, this would be adopted: (Clark, 1985)
by 1929, Pfizer was selling: (Bud, “Innovators,” 2011)
aluminum rotary fermenter: (Neushul, 1993)
Peoria team had a demonstration vat: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
“a favourable therapeutic response”: (Abraham, “Howard Walter Florey,” 1971)
four-and-a-half-year-old John Cox: (Lax, 2004)
“One could not trust”: (Clark, 1985)
“for research on proteins and viruses”: (Ferry, 1998)
“I’ve just come back from visiting Chain”: (Ferry, 1998)
“immersed in a gummy fluid”: (Ferry, 1998)
“the production of the drug”: (Macfarlane, Howard Florey, 1979) and (Lax, 2004)
“a bouquet, at least”: (Macfarlane, Howard Florey, 1979)
“I have now quite good evidence”: (Clark, 1985)
FIVE: “To See the Problem Clearly”
“adequate provision for research”: (Roosevelt, 1941)
protocols for funding through its six divisions: (Afflitto, 2012)
U.S. government had directly sponsored: (Starr, 1984)
the meeting, at which Bush presided: (Richards, A., 1964)
Years later, in 1957, Bush was named: (Zachary, 1997)
“it was possible to produce the kilo of material”: (Neushul, 1993)
“every possible means of combating infection”: (Hobby, 1985)
“A new pharmaceutical industry was born”: (Neushul, 1993)
“Inventions cannot, in nature, be a subject of property”: (Forman, 1900)
In 1921, three-quarters of the children: (Berg, 1973)
royalties well in excess of $7.5 million: (Bud, “Upheaval in the Moral Economy,” 2008)
“Are Patents on Medicinal Discoveries”: (Bud, “Upheaval in the Moral Economy,” 2008)
Ernst Chain had proposed patenting: (Abraham, “Howard Walter Florey,” 1971)
he was lobbying Dr. J. W. Trevan: (Abraham, “Ernst Boris Chain,” 1983)
“a whole tremendous virgin field”: (Clark, 1985)
“persisted in his ‘money grubbing’”: (Macfarlane, Howard Florey, 1979)
“gutters overrunning with”: (Lax, 2004).
“a new and useful method”: (Coghill, 1944)
It appears neither in his: (Neushul, 1993)
The key Coghill-Moyer patent: (Neushul, 1993)
“WHY NOT GO MERCK”: (Lax, 2004)
roughly $96 million today: There are at least half a dozen ways of calculating the present value of a particular figure. This number uses the GDP deflator from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, found at data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.
The Trading with the Enemy Act: (Steen, 2014)
the Powers-Weightman-Rosengarten Company: (Gortler, 2000)
At its dedication on April 25, 1933: (American Chemical Society, 1933)
Abbott Laboratories in 1914: (Kogan, 1963)
When Merck approached Richards: (Richards, A. N., 1949)
“saw in them no signs of the horns or tail”: (Richards, A., 1964)
“Max was born with”: (Gortler, 2000)
“to do research worthy”: (Merck, “The Chemical Industry,” 1935)
synthesized both vitamin B6 and pantothenic acid: (Gortler, 2000)
“We’re going to isolate every vitamin”: (Tishler, 1983)
neither of which would license them to Merck: (Tishler, 1983)
“other firms who have made”: (Lax, 2004)
in a toffee-flavored sugar cone: (Stevenson, 2014)
Alexander Hollaender, a researcher: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
new variety of the mold, known as Q-176: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
emergency physicians decided against debriding: (Cope, 1943)
Merck’s Rahway facility packaged: (Sheehan, 1982)
“7 HOURS TO LIVE”: (University of Pennsylvania, “Penicillin,” 2002)
“GIRL, 20, DEAD AFTER REFUSAL”: (Chicago Tribune, 1943)
A woman in Oklahoma City: (University of Pennsylvania, “Personal Correspondence,” 2002)
“Richards . . . recognized the simple truth”: (Clarke, 1949)
The office had recruited: (Bud, “Upheaval in the Moral Economy,” 2008)
processing forty-two thousand surface cultures a day: (Bud, “Upheaval in the Moral Economy,” 2008)
the CMR approved fifty-four contracts: (Richards, A., 1964) and (Neushul, 1993)
designated “scrambled facilities”: (Federal Trade Commission, 1958)
After the war, the newly enriched: (Federal Trade Commission, 1958)
By 1944, it was: (Younkin, Making the Market, 2008)
The only comparable events: (Younkin, “A Healthy Business,” 2010)
“Is it worth it?”: (Flavell-White, 2010)
“fol
lowed every tank”: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
Eli Lilly converted: (Kahn, 1976)
the giant Imperial Chemical Industries: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
the most powerful computing machinery: (Dodson, 2002)
Medical Research Council questioned her bill: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
they therefore “immediately accepted”: (Dodson, 2002)
Hodgkin later presented Chain: (Clark, 1985)
“She radiated love: for chemistry”: (Dodson, 2002)
Merck alone invested nearly $800,000: (Neushul, 1993)
by 1945, Germany was able to produce: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
I. G. Farben was investing: (Hayes, P., 1987)
nearly 40 percent of all industrial investment: (Hayes, P., 1987)
up to $1.5 billion in current dollars: (Hayes, P., 1987) and (Roth, 2011). The revenue in Reichsmarks—between 162 million and 351 million—has been translated using an exchange rate of 2.5 to the dollar, which was current in 1939.
Another $50 million was earned annually: (Hayes, P., 1987)
In 1944, it was barely one-fortieth: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
would eventually train five hundred clinicians: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007)
“the goal [is] to make penicillin so cheaply”: (Bud, Penicillin, 2007), quoting Albert E. Elder, The History of Penicillin Production (1970).
“To you, Ernst Chain”: (Holmberg, 1946)
SIX: “Man of the Soil”
Mineral Springs had only thirty-four beds: (Greenwood, 2008)
more than fifteen billion people: (Comas, 2013)
Skeletons exhumed from Egyptian gravesites: (Smith, I., 2003)
Treponema pallidum, the bacterium: (Todar, 2008–2012)
Since it’s older than domestication: (Wirth, 2008)
European-style sanatorium in Saranac Lake: (Rothman, S. M., 1995)
“appear like fairies to gladden the hearts”: (Chalke, 1962)
“Why do people go on dying of it?”: (Shaw, 1947)
Though the BCG vaccine: (Roy, 2014)
Waksman’s first fellow, Jackson Foster: (Major, 1949)
“production, purification . . . clinical trials”: (Pringle, 2012)
“I know the actinomycetes can do better”: (Pringle, 2012)
In a 1983 reminiscence: (Tishler, 1983)
“a chemical substance”: (Pringle, 2012)
“We isolated one hundred thousand”: (Schatz, 1993)
“real discovery was not streptomycin”: (Greenwood, 2008) 152, quoting Bernard Davis
Miracle Cure Page 33
