Tag: Ernst Chain
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Albert Alexander: Unsung hero of penicillin
JMS PearceHull, England Hartnup disease, Christmas disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease are instances of the rare naming of diseases after the patients so afflicted. There are other medical discoveries, disorders, or treatments in which the crucial part played by the patient is unattributed. One example relates to the early days of penicillin. The story of…
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Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM, FRS (1910-1994)
JMS PearceHull, England Dorothy Hodgkin (Fig 1), though not by religion, had close Quaker affinities through her marriage and through her spirited pacifism. She possessed a unique mixture of scientific skills that allowed her to extend the use of X-rays to reveal the structures of compounds, a technical venture far more complex than anything attempted…
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Chance in the origins of antibiotics
William KingstonDublin, Ireland The discovery of antibiotics has been described as the “domestication of microorganisms” and ranks in importance with the domestication of animals as part of settled agriculture about 10,000 years ago. It depends upon antagonism between bacteria, which had been noticed as early as 1874, and Pasteur commented then that if we could…