The re-invention of a military-only antiseptic into "bedside penicillin for all" creates a global beacon of hope for a world at war

the tiny stone the builders rejected

Despite the self-centred claims of physicists, the greatest benefits to humanity have generally been ardently pursued (invented), not accidentally stumbled upon (discovered).

DNA was discovered in 1860s by an Swiss doctor, but for most of us, it was really only discovered 125 years later in the late 1980s.

That was when it began to first be successfully used to solve unsolved criminal cases, when British researcher Alec Jeffries re-invented 'DNA' as a means to definitely identify biological evidence left at the scene of a crime.

1939-1945 : the modern Allies's real opponent was not Berlin anti-modernity but Manhattan ante-modernity ...

Conventionally , the Nazis were said to be anti-modern, though many of us feel they were the ultimate in hyper-modernity.

No, we think modernity in 1945 was defeated by ante- (or post-) modernity, of the Manhattan variety.

Henry Dawson, where ever you might be, take a bow .....

Even during Total War, its "who you know" not "what you know" : Richards, Queen and penicillin

Penicillin was not "reserved for military use only during WWII", as the cosy myth about wartime penicillin claims.

It was instead reserved as a plaything for medical researchers who would have quite happily have gone on polishing perfection until Judgement Day, if left to their own devices.

Consider how the American military finally got a look-see into penicillin, in early 1943 (remember the shooting war began back in the Fall of 1939).

Penicillin : from Modern to ante-Modern in six bloody years

The biggest battle of WWII was NOT Stalingrad ( physically huge but intellectually a mere bun fight between History's worst dictators) but rather the battle over wartime penicillin : who makes it and who receives it.

For WWII definitely had a 'war within a war' aspect to it .

America sure loves its minutemen and riflemen - except during wartime

MOS 745 (circa 1780)

Do you accept - or do you deny - gun control and climate change?

Do you think that wartime penicillin should just be for healthy young  scallywags who cheat on their wives but are still fully combat-ready or do you think it should be "wasted" on the dying of all nations, races and creeds ?

Some things never change and the skygods and earthlings still mix it up to oppose each other as much today on gun control and climate change as they did back almost 75 years ago on the best uses for wartime penicillin.

Very last files UK National Archives plans to digitalize : FO 370/926, futile appeals from abroad for British penicillin

The very last files that the UK National Archives plans to digitalize and put on line won't be the ultra-secret Ultra files . Trust me : Ultra was a success.

No the very last files, if ever, to be digitalized and put on line will be the series FO (Foreign Office) 370/926 : requests from aboard , 1944-1945, for that wonderful British invention , penicillin.

That's because what should have been the greatest success for the UK in WWII turned out to be their worst total balls-up disaster.

Did Atlee - or PENICILLIN - defeat Churchill in July 1945 ?

In retrospective, the shock defeat of Winston Churchill's National Government in the General Election of July 1945 could have been foreseen in the Fall of 1944.

All that Fall, a long series of indignant Parliamentary questions were raised - and un-comforting answers were given - about the national government's refusal to find penicillin for UK civilians dying of endocarditis while Britain found the means to supply the same medicine to "Germans, Finnish Prime Ministers and Swiss footballers".

Germany and Finland were in the Axis and most Britons saw Switzerland as at least a fellow traveller.

For a medicine Modernity reserved for the military, penicillin sure missed a lot of battles ...

The USSR had at least 3 million life-threatening cases of bacterial infection between August 1940 and August 1945 that penicillin could have successfully treated.

It is not well known that Russia did make it its own penicillin and did treat some serious infections with it and saved some lives as a result during those five war years.

Sort of.

Soviet doctors treated 300 cases with their penicillin over those five years : out of at least 3 million life-threatening cases.

Not surprisingly, the Miracle of Penicillin does not loom highly in Russian historical accounts of the Great Patriotic War.

This too might easily have been the fate of wartime penicillin in the Allied West as well.

The war began with Modern penicillin and ended with Postmodern penicillin

The war began with Modern penicillin and ended - quite unexpectedly - with Postmodern penicillin.

Began with micro-grams of Modern penicillin and ended, quite unexpectedly, with kilo-tonnes of Postmodern penicillin.

In fact we began WWII itself with Modernity at its very apogee and ended it - also quite unexpectedly - with the birth pangs of Postmodernity.

And penicillin was at the very heart of that fundamental change in world views.

During the Ultimate Battle against the Nazi Evil, most of the world spent it parked in NEUTRAL

Only one nation group ( the British Commonwealth) was an combatant during the entire six years of WWII (September 1939 to September 1945) : even the original aggressor, Germany, ceased to be a combatant with its surrender early in 1945.

Every other nation on Earth - bar none - was neutral in the battle against Hitler and the Nazi Evil : for some, most or all of World War Two.

The sad fact is that most of the world's independent nations 'dog-danced' around the greatest moral crisis Humanity has ever faced.

Fleming vs Wright 1929: local surgeon vs general immunologist ?

It is not generally accepted that Alexander Fleming actually did fight hard with his nominal boss, Sir Almroth Wright, to ensure the inclusion of a brief paragraph in his 1929 article that introduced penicillin to the world - the one that said it might have antiseptic applications.

Many researchers are skeptical about the idea of an undocumented fight.

They fear Fleming and his supporters are merely using it as an excuse to shift the blame onto Wright for Fleming's 15 year failure to put the world's best ever germ killer to work saving lives.

I do think there was a fight and that the disagreement , in a sense, flatters Wright and diminishes a part of Fleming's current reputation (though I haste to add , Fleming himself never ever fostered this part of his reputation.)

Alexander Fleming : surgeon manque ?

It is not well known that Alexander Fleming the bacteriologist actually trained to be a surgeon but never practised and apparently didn't mind the missed opportunity.

Or did he ?

I think he did, in fact, long to use a surgeon's lancet - albeit on a tiny/micro scale.

Penicillin, age 13, meets her first lover : Henry Dawson

Mad, is he ??

It was frequently said of Dr Henry Dawson (as it was of General James Wolfe) that he was quite mad.

But what can one say in response, that George II hasn't already said much better over two hundred and fifty years earlier ?

It is true that Henry Dawson was quite mad , mad on the subject of the "unlimited potential" of penicillin , at a time (1941) when almost all ignored it and even its own 'supporters' damned it with veiled praise.

Fleming's non-toxic antiseptic was useless (and was called penicillin)

Toxic - but effective - antiseptic

An extremely non-toxic ,wide-spectrum (for its time)  germ-killer that can be used as a huge-dose, long term, systemic (ie something we safely introduce into the bloodstream), is a very rare indeed.

And highly valuable, even priceless, whenever our body faces massive body-wide infections that can kill us.

By contrast, what Alexander Fleming claimed to offer between the Fall of 1928 and the Fall of 1942, was a slow acting, non-toxic, wide-spectrum antiseptic (externally applied) germ-killer that was in very short supply and very unstable.