Bidder pays big bucks for the revolutionary antibiotic
By | |A small sample of Sir Alexander Fleming's original penicillin culture () was put up for sale by a London auction house in July. In 1955 Fleming had given the fungus to a neighbor to thank him for foiling a robbery at the famed microbiologist's home. Fleming stumbled on the antibiotic properties of mold in 1928, and over the course of the following decade University of Oxford bacteriologists and others expanded on his findings to develop the first antibiotic drug. Mass production of penicillin during World War II cured millions of people of bacterial infections that would have been fatal otherwise. Today antibiotics are considered one of the greatest discoveries in medical history—thus the auction of a crusty petri dish that would have been thrown out long ago. In a letter accompanying the sample, the microbiologist's housekeeper warned its recipient that the contents were “not to be confused with Gorgonzola cheese!!!”
$20
6.8 trillion
1
20+
£4,649
SOURCES FOR STATISTICS: DISCOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT OF PENICILLIN, IN AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY'S INTERNATIONAL HISTORIC CHEMICAL LANDMARKS (); “THE REAL STORY BEHIND PENICILLIN,” BY HOWARD MARKEL, IN 'S “THE RUNDOWN.” PUBLISHED ONLINE SEPTEMBER 27, 2013 (); “NEW BUSINESS MODELS FOR ANTIBIOTIC INNOVATION,” BY ANTHONY D. SO AND TEJEN A. SHAH, IN , VOL. 119, NO. 2; MAY 2014 (); CATHERINE SOUTHON AUCTIONEERS & VALUERS ()
No comments:
Post a Comment