Three individuals' beliefs in the superiority of human chemists over natural chemists drove the fifteen year effort to delay the use of life-saving penicillin until it had become a patented man-made synthetic analogue : Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and George Merck.
Fleming and Florey got Nobel prizes for their unsuccessful efforts to delay the use of this wonderful lifesaver --- Merck had to be content with the cover of TIME.
Man-made penicillin was to be literally that : something manufactured by people of the male gender with no females nurturing penicillium flasks and no fungi to be charmed into giving off their natural penicillin.
Fleming and Florey got Nobel prizes for their unsuccessful efforts to delay the use of this wonderful lifesaver --- Merck had to be content with the cover of TIME.
Man-made penicillin was to be literally that : something manufactured by people of the male gender with no females nurturing penicillium flasks and no fungi to be charmed into giving off their natural penicillin.
