Robert Pulvertaft's use of crude penicillin in Cairo

Abstract

Alexander Fleming discovered the bacterial effects of a substance diffusing from cultures of Penicillium in 1928. His early attempts to purify an active factor were unsuccessful, as were those of Harold Raistrick. It required the energy of Howard Florey and the efforts of Ernst Chain and others to purify penicillin from the broth used to grow the fungus and to test it in a patient in 1941. However, crude filtrates had been used by Fleming in 19321 and Cecil Paine in 1930-31 at Sheffield2 to treat eye infections. Reports of neither of these uses had been published, although Florey knew of Paine's work.3 Penicillin became available in 1942 and was talked about as far away as the Middle East-"We now began to hear about the new drug Penicillin, at that time in extremely short supply on all fronts".4 The first supplies reached the Middle East about August