Chapter 2 



How Antibiotics Came to be 

 Recognized 



Anyone attempting to analyze the his- 

 torical background of our present day knowl- 

 edge of antibiotics must take into considera- 

 tion not only scientific concepts, but also 

 popular observations and beliefs. Moreover, 

 there has always been the danger of reading 

 into observations the results of subsequent 

 experiments. With our present knowledge, 

 we are now able to analyze complicated 

 observations of the past in simple terms, 

 but we may forget that the pioneer observer 

 was not thinking along the same lines that 

 we now are. It is a further problem to decide 

 whether one observation truly exerted an 

 influence upon a subsequent line of scientific 

 development, since this is largely a matter 

 of interpretation. Was it merely a name 

 proposed at the right time, or was it the 

 persistence of one or another investigator 

 that turned a particular obser\^ation into an 

 important scientific or practical contrilui- 

 tion? 



Even though we have hindsight at our 

 disposal, we cannot always analyze faith- 

 fully the events of the past, but we can try. 



1. One may first consider the origin of 

 our knowledge of penicillin. The French 

 bacteriologist Duchesne wrote a thesis, 

 published in 1897, on the antagonisms be- 

 tween fungi and bacteria. He described ex- 

 periments in which injection of large 

 amounts of a culture of PcmciUium 

 glaucum permitted the sur\nval of guinea 



pigs that had received lethal doses of gram- 

 negative bacteria. He concluded: "One 

 might thus hope that by pursuing the study 

 of biological competition between molds and 

 microbes, one might be led to the discovery 

 of other facts which would be directly use- 

 ful and applicable to prophylactic hygiene 

 and to therapy." Had he lived long enough 

 or had others appreciated the significance 

 of his work, the discovery of penicillin 

 might have come at a much earlier date. 

 Accurate observations on the production of 

 l)acteriolytic agents by "a strain of Peni- 

 cillium glaucum'" were made in 1925 

 by the Belgian bacteriologist Gratia (1930). 

 Had he used a specific name ("The trouble 

 with you, my boy," said the famous im- 

 munologist Bordet of Brussels to his former 

 student Gratia of Li'^ge, "is that you do not 

 christen your babies.") for the metabolic 

 product of his PcniciUium culture that 

 exerted an inhibiting effect upon bacteria, 

 the now famous antibiotic might have been 

 known under a totally ditferent label. 

 Finally, Chain and Florey (1940) of Oxford 

 University, England, after ha\'ing studied 

 various natural products, including the 

 lysozyme of Fleming (1922), turned their 

 attention in 1938-1939 to the antimicrobial 

 substances produced by microorganisms. 

 The.y isolated from a culture of PcniciUium 

 notatum the active antibacterial substance 

 observed by Fleming in 1928 (1929) and 



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