When Penicillin Pays: Why China Loves Antibiotics a Little Too Much

Every year when the wet winter weather sweeps through southern Anhui province, Ling Cheng gets a niggling cough that she just can't shake. But instead of...

Medicine 1944: 20th Century Seer, Dr. Alexander Fleming : Penicillin

20th Century Seer Medical news last week vied with news of the days before an invasion. Under the aspect of eternity, the medical news might even be more...

Drugs: Toward a Safer Penicillin

The many varieties of penicillin have a unique disadvantage: about one in a hundred patients who get them by injection becomes sensitized, so that his next...

Medicine: The Penicillin Eaters

While routinely examining a vaginal swab from a woman infected with gonorrhea, Dr. Ian Phillips of London's St. Thomas's Hospital made an alarming discovery: the...

Science: Man-Made Penicillin

The blue-green mold, Penicillium notatum, which excretes penicillin, has a laboratory rival. Last week a biochemical team led by Dr. Vincent du Vigneaud of the...

Medicine: In Defense of Penicillin

Both Sir Alexander Fleming and the penicillin he discovered have recently come in for some unkind words. In Britain, critics complain that Fleming got a bigger...

Medicine: Penicillin Week

The wonder drug penicillin is scheduled to go on sale in U.S. drugstores this week though actual marketing may be a little late, since the Pure Food and Drug...

Medicine: Penicillin Progress

Penicillin made news and progress again last week. During July the 2,000 U.S. depot hospitals which distribute penicillin (TIME, May 22) will get 20% more than...

Medicine: Fleming on Penicillin

Is penicillin a drug or an argument? Doctors have been awed and appalled by a gusher of argumentative books and reports claiming that 1) penicillin will cure...

Science: Penicillin Synthesis

After nine years of dogged work, Chemist John C. Sheehan of M.I.T. announced last week that he had discovered a practical method of synthesizing penicillin V,...