372 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



antibiotic could be administered orally, a property greeted warmly 

 by those who had submitted to the indignities of multiple shots 

 of penicillin. 



Incidentally, the chemical constitution of chloramphenicol and 

 methods of synthesizing it were worked out in 1949 by Dr. Mildred 

 Eebstock. It is the first, and so far the only, antibiotic to be made 

 commercially by total chemical synthesis, which soon displaced the 

 fermentation process for producing it. The manufacturing plant for 

 the commercial synthesis, belonging to Parke, Davis and Company, 

 is at Holland, Michigan. The distaff side may well be proud of its 

 role in the development of antibiotics. It was Dr. Mary Florey, 

 British physician, who first used penicillin successfully on human 

 beings suffering gravely from bacterial infection, and a woman assist- 

 ant in the Peoria Laboratory, now Mrs. Steven J. Steven, of Brook- 

 field, Illinois, who obtained the choice PenicilUum chrysogenum. 



Aureomycin was discovered in 1948 by the renowned botanist B. M. 

 Duggar, who was in his "retirement" from the University of Wis- 

 consin, as an employee of the Lederele Laboratories at Pearl River, 

 New York. Fellow botanists were particularly pleased to have a great 

 researcher in theoretical botany win laurels when he turned to an 

 applied field. He had been a leader in plant pathology and then in 

 radiation biology. (Parenthetically, Michigan's beloved Harley 

 Harris Bartlett reported that it was Duggar who first grasped the 

 parallelism between viruses and genes — in fact, he had remarked that 

 viruses are escaped genes. ) Aureomycin is derived from Streptomyces 

 aureofaciens : its name denotes the golden color of the mold and of 

 the antibiotic, and not that it is taken orally^ as a well-known news- 

 paper claimed ! 



The last of the major antibiotics, terramycin, was discovered in 

 the laboratories of the Charles Pfizer and Company, Brooklyn, New 

 York, in 1950. It is derived from the actinomycete Streptomyces 

 rimosus. No claim can be made by botanists for the discovery or de- 

 velopment of this antibiotic. Aureomycin and terramycin are perhaps 

 better known to the public as the tetracyclines. Aureomycin is chlor- 

 tetracycline, and terramycin is chemically designated oxytetracy- 

 cline. Both are used commonly as broad-spectrum drugs, active 

 against a wide variety of bacteria and even certain amoebae and 

 pinworms. 



It is remarkable that no antibiotic to rival penicillin or the tetracy- 

 clines has been discovered since 1950, in spite of large-scale attempts 

 by industry to locate favorable natural sources. This may mean that 

 the storehouse of these valuable substances in nature is indeed limited, 

 or perhaps that the search has been too restricted. Several safe and 

 effective antibiotics have been made available for medical use. Those 

 derived from Streptomyces lead the list: erythromycin, colymycin. 



