PENICILLIN - HEATLEY, Norman, & Howard Florey.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Ceramic culture vessel, together with a collection of scientific offprints. A culture vessel used for the production of penicillin, from the collection of the vessel's designer, Norman Heatley. It was used by Howard Florey's research team, who pioneered the drug's clinical use. It is offered with Heatley's collection of offprints by Florey, as well as the papers that announced their discovery: "Penicillin as a Chemotherapeutic Agent" (1940) and "Further Observations on Penicillin" (1941).Although penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, it "might well have become an obscure scientific curiosity but for the work of Chain and Florey" (PMM). It was not until 1938, when Florey (1898-1968) and his team at the University of Oxford began working on it, that its therapeutic potential was fully realized. However, a major challenge was producing enough of the drug to treat an adult patient. This problem was solved by Heatley (1911-2004), a "genius for improvisation and invention", who developed the back-extraction technique, enabling penicillin to be efficiently purified in bulk (ODNB). The next obstacle was producing sufficient culture vessels for the new technique during wartime. With metal in short supply and glass prohibitively expensive, the team repurposed domestic items such as baking trays and bedpans from the Radcliffe Infirmary. The bedpans proved particularly effective, inspiring Heatley to design his own version. Produced by James MacIntyre & Co. in Burslem,

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