Were Stalin's COMMIES the best at making crude penicillin ? Say it ain't so, Joe !

Here is what Howard Florey, normally the most hostile critic of crude penicillin, found in his analysis of the crude Russian penicillin liquids in early 1944: 30 to 40 Oxford units per cc/ml.

Amazing !


It had taken years of hard work from the best American and British researchers, lots of expensive equipment and the best strains of penicillium to get those sort of levels from their own surface production of penicillium juice on an routine factory level.

Ruskies outdid even Aussie Duhig !

Apparently, the Russians  (a la Dr Duhig) kept things real simple and real efficient : they quickly ran the raw juice through the customary Seitz filter and into 10cc ampoules and then right into the patients' arms -routinely curing serious blood poisoning situations.

When you have 30 plus units of penicillin per cc, a 300 cc drip IV of raw penicillium juice delivers 10,000 units of serious infection-fighting power.

When your juice only has 1.5 units plus of penicillin per cc, ( which is closer to what Dawson and Florey got off their raw juice) 300 cc only gives 500 units in total per IV drip and that only fights very small infections with highly sensitive bacteria.

Not a common situation and also not the sort of situation where the attending doctor would normally even ask for an experimental drug's help.

The strain the Russians used (which they said was a variant of penicillium crustosum) was from basement wall slime they had found in a dark, dank, damp air-raid shelter ......