Breaking the mould : the story of penicillin.

This film is a biopic of Howard Florey, who devised a method of producing penicillin in industrial quantities. It starts with scenes in a septic hospital ward with male patients with huge open wounds - sepsis was a life-threatening condition before the widespread use of anti-biotics. A meeting takes place in 1942 where Alexander Fleming takes all the credit for the 'invention'. Florey's mentor, Edward Mellanby, and the medical establishment are at first sceptical of the potential of penicillin due to the difficulties of extracting enough to carry out clinical trails. Florey and his team, gathered together from a wide number of scientific disciplines, create enough penicillin to trial the drug on mice. Their work takes place against growing hostilities in WWII. The next challenge is to create enough penicillin to treat humans. Howard Florey is introduced to a young doctor - Charles Fletcher - at the Radcliffe Royal Infirmary, Oxford. Florey writes in his diary that two Wellcome people visit him - then decide that it is not for them. Without the blessing of the Medical Research Council, Florey conducts medical trails at the Radcliffe Infirmary with Fletcher's assistance. By 1942 there is a penicillin ward in the Radcliffe - with the supervising doctor being Florey's wife. However, despite some successes, with no supportive pharmaceutical company on board, Florey finds himself at a loss. Alexander Fleming, who was based at St. Mary's, London, then asks for some samples of the drug for a sick friend and, when the man is cured, steps into the limelight as the inventor of the 'miracle' drug. This alerts the establishment to penicillin's potential in the war effort.