Florey: The Man Who Made Penicillin
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About this ebook
Born in Australia, Florey left Adelaide for Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship after graduating in medicine, seeking a career in medical science. In a time when an infection from a thorn scratch could lead to a long and painful death, and meningitis, rheumatic fever, venereal disease and other bacterial infections had meant certain doom, the idea of an antibiotic that could treat all of these afflictions was almost unimaginable. In the aftermath of WW1, when septicaemia and gas gangrene had claimed the lives of so many young men, the need for antibiotics had never been keener.
First published in 1972, Florey, the Man Who Made Penicillin tracks Florey's battle with funding, the many set-backs and limitations of his equipment and public opinion, and the fascinating journey that led humankind to Penicillin. Whist Fleming got the lion's share of the credit, it was Florey who truly gave the world Penicillin.
Lennard Bickel
Lennard Bickel (1913–2002) was a science writer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the 1960s. He was the only Australian journalist invited to witness the 1969 Apollo II moon landing from the launch site. In 1970, Bickel was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship in order to write Rise Up To Life, a biography of Howard Florey, who pioneered the development of penicillin. He subsequently wrote a number of other books that highlight remarkable human achievement: little-known epics of triumph over diversity, including This Accursed Land (1977), about Douglas Mawson's struggle to stay alive in the Antarctic, and Triumph Over Darkness: The Life of Louis Braille (1988). In 1974 he was made a Knight of the Order of Mark Twain for his biography of Norman Borlaug, the Nobel-winning humanitarian scientist.
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Reviews for Florey
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- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book has done a lot to redress the imbalance in the story of the development of penicillin. Howard Florey, An energetic young Australian turns up in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and finds himself taking the strategic option to follow a lead from a paper by Alexander Fleming. Fleming had noticed that bacteria were turned in their tracks by a mould, but was not able to harness it or grow sufficient material to conduct any further tests - and abandoned the idea. Through much hard work and lots of lobbying from a team under Florey's direction, penicillin made it as the common medical treatment for infections.The story is well told by Bickel. Necessarily he had to expose Florey as a reluctant player not keen on self-promotion or plaudits. And that Fleming willingly and probably accidentally filled the role such that he is usually given much, if not all, of the credit for penicillin. Watch out for the small story at the end where Florey is asked to financially contribute to a tribute to Fleming.