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Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy
Penicillin is the drug of the twentieth century. It was the first of the antibiotics that, for decades after the Second World War, underpinned a popular belief that the threat of infectious disease had at last met its match. With the emergence of 'superbugs' these hopes have faded. Robert Bud pulls these different but conjoined stories into a compelling narrative: using a wealth of new research, he sets the discovery and use of penicillin in the broader context of social and cultural change across the world. His book will be of great interest to historians, scientists, and anyone wishing to understand this drug's seismic impact on our lives..
Price: $37.77
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Alexander Fleming and the Story of Penicillin (Unlocking the Secrets of Science)
Never one to worry about neatness, Scottish-born scientist Alexander Fleming often grew cultures in unwashed petri dishes. In the hot summer of 1928, Fleming left for a two-week vacation. He left his London laboratory a mess and didn't close his window. In his haste, he also forgot to clean up an old culture plate that he had smeared with staphylococcus bacteria. Soon after he left, a spore containing a rare strain of a fungus mold called penicillium drifted into his lab from another lab in the same building. By chance, it settled onto the messy culture plate. And if that wasn't lucky enough, the weather stepped in to add even more. The temperature briefly dropped, so the mold began to grow. Then things heated up again, and the bacteria on the plate sprouted like a weed. Except in one spot. That one spot attracted Fleming's eye when he returned from vacation. It was where the penicillium spore had settled and grown. Fleming believed he had discovered something very important. Not everyone else agreed. In fact, it would take until World War II, when he was well into middle age, before anyone appreciated his discovery..
Price: $23.39
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The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle
"Admirable, superbly researched . . . perhaps the most exciting tale of science since the apple dropped on Newton's head."—Simon Winchester, The New York Times Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in his London laboratory in 1928 and its eventual development as the first antibiotic by a team at Oxford University headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain in 1942 led to the introduction of the most important family of drugs of the twentieth century. Yet credit for penicillin is largely misplaced. Neither Fleming nor Florey and his associates ever made real money from their achievements; instead it was the American labs that won patents on penicillin's manufacture and drew royalties from its sale. Why this happened, why it took fourteen years to develop penicillin, and how it was finally done is a fascinating story of quirky individuals, missed opportunities, medical prejudice, brilliant science, shoestring research, wartime pressures, misplaced modesty, conflicts between mentors and their protégés, and the passage of medicine from one era to the next. .
Price: $1.50
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Praise the Lord and Pass the Penicillin: Memoir of a Combat Medic in the Pacific in World War II
He was a chemistry student in college on his way home for a visit when news of Pearl Harbor came over the car radio. Like 16 million others from his generation, Dean W. Andersen was called to active military duty and spent the next 38 months of his life as a medic in the Pacific war theater. This memoir shows that the human feelings of fear, loss, anger, hate, patriotism and solidarity were the same then as they have been for every war since. The experiences of the "greatest generation" can comfort and advise young people today who may well be faced with challenges as great as those met so long ago. Based on 93 letters written home to his wife and parents during his time away at war, this book includes information that was disallowed by censors and in some cases, cut out of his correspondence. Though the history of the European theater in World War II is well documented, considerably less information is available about the war in the Pacific. The author recalls the many aspects of his experience—from landing on beaches in the South Pacific amid exotic birds and animals and interacting with the people of New Guinea, to evacuating wounded soldiers through steaming jungles and snake-infested swamps and over high mountains, to facing machine gun fire and watching snipers kill the last man in a column of marchers. The book includes many interesting photographs that have never been published, including images of the Japanese surrender..
Price: $35.00
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