Penicillin : biologic 1929-1939 , chemotherapeutic 1939-1949

In 1944, Frank M Berger ( later creator of the post-war drug Miltown but then just a worker in a local municipal public health lab in the remotes of northern England)  came up with an unique way of making and using penicillin.

On second thoughts, his method might well have been done first by Alexander Fleming's Wright-Fleming vaccine institute and their pharmaceutical distributor Parke-Davis about 15 years earlier : Penicillin the Biologic.

On further further reflection : should have been done first by Alec Fleming.

Berger's penicillin was only concentrated and purified to the point that not too much penicillin was lost or too much scarce labour and expensive equipment used to create and extract it.

This biological penicillin, Berger claimed,  was safe, potent and cheap  ---and liquid.

Liquid --- and stored cold in the hospital that made it, ( not usually stored more than a week at most), until the next life-threatening case of blood poisoning in that same hospital was cured by its systemic (ie by needle) application.

The immediate use of whole liquid blood (another biologic dismissed earlier in the war) right at the front lines of combat was/is vital for survival of the badly wounded soldier.

But immediately pouring penicillin or sulfa into the man's dirty wound (ie via "local" application) - counter-intutively - is not.

Quickly getting him back to a hospital-like setting where penicillin or sulfa can be given him systemically, and under more carefully monitored conditions, was still useful.

But, it proved not essential to do so immediately even there ; often the staff could afford to wait to first see if signs of systemic infection were present (usually via a temperature rise.)

Ie, Howard Florey's 1939 claim that penicillin was only useful if made into a dry powder that remained stable at room temperature for months at a time was totally in error --- if life-saving was to be its main (wartime) role.

Berger's efforts were merely the best thought out among the number of doctors advocating biologic penicillin, not by any means the first (Dawson) or the most stunning (Duhig) .

By contrast, Florey was the chief high priest of Penicillin the  Chemotherapeutic, (pure,dry,powdery), from first to last its leading advocate....

How Parke-Davis could have made a fortune in 1929 from the ultimate in generic drugs : natural penicillin

Parke-Davis, as seen from my folks' homes

A medication made by some natural being out in Nature is the 'ultimate generic drug'  ---- being PD (Public Domain) from its birth, which possibly occurred hundreds of millions of years before Humanity first noticed it.

Penicillin - in theory - is one such 'ultimate generic drug' , but was it in fact, in 1929 ?


Many strains of various bacteria and molds make penicillin-like beta-lactam materials but most do so in such small quantities that it takes very sensitive testing to discover their existence.

As such, St Mary's hospital in 1929 had the only two known strains of  microbes known to make sufficient penicillin to be useful to man.

The original mold had been gathered as part of John Freeman's pioneering studies in allergies.

 (Freeman's researches were the only part of the entire Wright-Fleming money-making empire that had any longterm scientific validity - as evidenced by being the only part of the Institute that a drug company, Beecham, was actually willing to part good money for in the 1950s after Fleming and Wright were safely in their graves.)

Spores from Freeman's unique mold had drifted up to Fleming's lab and so the hospital now controlled two copies of the same unique strain of mold.

Parke-Davis lost its chance to remain the world's biggest drug company

The Institute had a close contractual relationship with what was then the world's biggest and best research-oriented drug company - Detroit's Parke-Davis.

 (Their enormous ( for their day) research labs were/are clearly visible right across the river from both my parents' home in Windsor Ontario.)

Patents were impossible for natural drugs but hardly needed, for St Mary's/Parke-Davis controlled the only source of the vital reagent needed to make penicillin : their unique strain of penicillium.

Keep that strain in-house and they could have a profitable monopoly forever.

Think this wildly unlikely ?

How do you think today's real penicillin makers still act ?

They develop in-house strains of penicillium and never patent them or share them.

The down-stream techniques after the penicillium express the penicillin juice are/were patented and hence public, for a fee.

But they are useless without a stable, high producing penicillium strain : one can afford to be quite cavalier with one's chemical engineering efficiencies when your unique strain out-produces all your competitors by an order or two of magnitude !

Trade Secrets rather than patents remain the most profitably business method in the biological drug business - now in 2012 as in 1928 .

When Fleming, after he too-quickly dismissed penicillin for systemic use, started freely giving away penicillium spores as a low value lab clearing agent, he ruined any hopes that Parke-Davis and St Mary's might put heavy money in penicillin production and promotion.

Ironically when he thus destroyed the early commercial hopes for penicillin production, his spores out there in the wider medical world, successfully kept the MRC/NAS/OSRD triad from delaying wartime penicillin any longer than they already did....