Looking back on the twentieth century, it is difficult to nominate an individual Australian whose contribution to the welfare of humanity was greater than that of Howard Florey. In 1945, Florey, Alexander Fleming and Ernst Chain jointly received the Nobel Prize. Their contribution was the new ‘wonder drug’, penicillin. Prior to the mass production of penicillin, the simplest infection—a scratch or pinprick—could spell amputation of a limb or even death. ‘Infection’ was a fearful word for the parents or grandparents of most people reading this article. Today, we take much for granted; the overwhelming majority of infections are cured painlessly with antibiotics, of which penicillin remains the most common. Fleming had accidentally discovered a mould containing Penicillium notatum in 1928. Noting its antibacterial qualities, he tested its effectiveness as an antiseptic in treating open wounds and wrote an article for the British medical journal, the Lancet. His active interest in penicillin ended there and it was Howard Florey, a decade later, who led a team of researchers at Oxford in transforming a scientific observation into the century’s greatest practical weapon in the fight against infection. Florey and his team dried the penicillin ‘juice’ from Fleming’s mould (which had been stored in a laboratory fridge) and made it into a powder. They then set about purifying the drug so that it could be ingested for the treatment of infections within body cells. In May 1940, they tested it for the first time on living creatures: eight laboratory mice. All the mice had been injected with a deadly dose of streptococci but only four were treated with penicillin. The lucky four survived; the other four died. Florey and his team—Chain, N.G. Heatley, A.D. Gardner, J. Orr-Ewing, M.A. Jennings and his wife Ethel Florey—published their findings in the Lancet in an article entitled ‘Penicillin as a chemotherapeutic agent’. I found it quite a thrill to peruse the article in the original hard copy edition of the Lancet (24 August, 1940), which is held by the National Library. It wasn’t until 1941 that Florey and his team tested the drug on a human: a policeman named Albert Alexander who developed horrible life-threatening infections throughout his body after scratching himself with a rose thorn. Alexander made a remarkable recovery but then died when the supply of penicillin (which was extremely difficult to produce in large quantities at the time) was exhausted. Florey pledged never again to test the drug unless an adequate supply was guaranteed and, years later, his fear of a mass rush on the drug resulted in him shying away from publicity. As a result, the name of Alexander Fleming is still most commonly associated with the production of penicillin. This misconception was reinforced by publicity given to Fleming in 1942 when he successfully treated a friend who was dying from meningitis—but he used the penicillin developed by Florey’s team. Howard Florey was born in Adelaide on 24 September 1898. He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide and in 1921 went to England on a Rhodes Scholarship. During the 1920s he worked at Cambridge and in the United States of America. He was appointed to the Chair of Pathology at Sheffield University in 1932 and head of Pathology at Oxford in 1935. Florey returned to Australia briefly in 1944 at the invitation of Prime Minister John Curtin, who was keen to see penicillin manufactured for civilian use. (Commonwealth Serum Laboratories was the first company in the world to manufacture penicillin for civilian consumption.) He also asked Florey to help establish a medical research centre as part of the proposed Australian National University (ANU). Florey returned to Canberra almost annually during the 1950s and 1960s to consult with ANU colleagues and in 1958 he opened the John Curtin School of Medicine. In 1960, he became the first Australian to be elected President of the Royal Society and in 1965 was made a Life Peer (Lord Florey, Baron of Adelaide and Marston). That year he was also appointed Chancellor of ANU. On 21 February 1968, he died at his home in Oxford, England.
The National Library holds all the major and minor works on Florey. Major studies are R.G. Mcfarlane’s Howard Florey: The Making of a Great Scientist (1979), T.I. Williams’ Howard Florey: Penicillin and After (1984) and Lennard Bickel’s Howard Florey: The Man Who Made Penicillin. Bickel’s book has gone through three editions and was translated into Japanese under its original title, Rise Up to Life: A Biography of Howard Walter Florey Who Gave Penicillin to the World. (Bickel’s papers are held in the Manuscript Collection.) There are booklets for primary and secondary students, such as Howard Florey: The Man Who Developed Penicillin by Diana Chase and Valerie Krantz (1991), Howard Florey: Miracle Maker by Kirsty Murray (1998) and Rod Martin’s The Penicillin Puzzle (1998). A CD-ROM entitled Florey and the Miracle Mould was put together by the South Australian History Centre in 1996 and, in 1998, Bryan Furness edited Infectious Diseases in Humans, the proceedings of a Florey Centenary symposium. Works by Florey himself include various editions of the textbook, Lectures on General Pathology, which he first edited in 1954. The Library also holds the report on the use of penicillin in war wounds, which was compiled under Florey’s direction for the British War Office in 1943. Two special items, however, are Florey’s papers, held in microform, and an interview conducted with Florey in 1967 for the Oral History Collection. The originals of Florey’s papers are held by the Royal Society in London but these were copied for the National Library under the Australian Joint Copying Project. The three microfilm reels include Florey’s papers relating to penicillin, various lectures, photograph albums and correspondence. The Oral History interview stands as the rarest item and was conducted by Hazel de Berg. The National Library’s tapes are almost certainly the only preserved record of Florey’s voice and have been in big demand by broadcasters, documentary makers and researchers. In 1998, when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) produced a radio documentary on Florey, it relied heavily on the Library’s tapes.
I listened in awe and fascination to the voice of the man whose penicillin is prescribed about 200 million times a year around the world, saving millions of lives. The human voice comes in many shapes and forms, and reveals muchabout an individual’s character, personality and background. The first thing that struck me was how English Florey sounded. His accent was not quite aristocratic but was consistent with what Gus Fraenkel, former Dean of Flinders Medical School, described on the ABC radio documentary as ‘very upper–crust Adelaide’. Florey’s manner of speech on the tape does not tally with Professor Frank Fenner’s description of him, in the National Portrait Gallery’s 1998 brochure on Howard Florey, as ‘somewhat brusque and down-to-earth’ nor with Gwyn Mcfarlane’s recollection of Florey as a ‘rough tough Australian’. Florey’s manner of speech is that of the scientist and teacher: thoughtful, steady, slow, clear and careful. A remarkable feature of Florey’s style of speech is that, in general, it reads grammatically. The discrepancy between Florey’s actual voice and the recollections of his personality by those former colleagues who have gone into print highlights the fact that Hazel de Berg was a pioneer of Australian oral history who adopted an approach that differs from the more direct interviewing methods used today. De Berg more or less allowed her subjects to speak for themselves. There is minimal intervention on her part, and there is a certain self-consciousness in Florey’s manner which might otherwise have been broken down. In the recording, he speaks of how his colleagues at Oxford treated him ‘extremely well’ but how he was also regarded as ‘one of those rough Colonials’. This did not worry him; on the contrary, it enabled him to ‘get away with any sort of gaucheries [and was] a very good line to play’. Perhaps he was capable of stereoptypical Australian behaviour when it suited him. The de Berg collection numbers around 1200 prominent Australians. It is a national treasure. However, there is no doubt that an interview conducted today would be far more interventionist, posing specific questions arising from extensive pre-interview research or from an already existing expertise. Florey tells de Berg that he had ‘a very nice upbringing’, and leaves it at that. But what games did he play as a child? Was he closer to his mother or father? Who first taught him basic skills of talking, reading and writing? What was his earliest specific memory? What was his unhappiest childhood experience? The de Berg interview brings out some important information—some ‘myths’ are shattered. For example, Florey emphasises that he ‘hardly knew’ Fleming and never worked with him. (But what did he think of Fleming?) Another example: Florey repudiates the idea that his research was undertaken because of World War II. ‘This is not true at all,’ he states. ‘It was started before the war.’ And he shatters any notion of the scientist-as-knight-in-shining-armour when he says:
This is great stuff but there was so much more to be asked. For example, Florey did not patent penicillin because he felt it should belong to humanity. But how did he feel about the fact that American companies patented it? Was this a regret? Did he have regrets in life? The de Berg interview with Howard Florey is among the Library’s most significant original materials. It provides information and helps us understand the character of a man whose essential ingredients were summarised by Lennard Bickel as ‘courage, vision, leadership and learning on a broad scale’. These were, says Bickel, ‘the same ingredients that were needed to produce penicillin’. BARRY YORK is a writer and historian. His email address is garocon@pcug.org.au |
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