Showing posts with label daily herald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daily herald. Show all posts

Friday, September 5, 2014

Penicillin fame , September 1941 : when cat Florey is out of town, mouse Fleming begins to play ...

Alexander Fleming never asserted his quite spurious claim that he had long advocated a lifesaving role for penicillin until the beginning of September 1941.

That was exactly the time when the person most likely to be able and willing to accurately dispute that claim, his friend and fellow penicillin pioneer Howard Florey, was (in) conveniently out of the country and unable to respond because of war restrictions on communications.

When one of the UK's biggest newspapers - the Daily Herald - took up Fleming's claim from his letter to the editor in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) , the infamous "Fleming Myth" was fully made.