Antibiotics : the mould, the myth and the microbe.

First part of a two-part programme on the past, present and future of antibiotics. A "revisionist" account of the events surrounding the "discovery" of penicillin, which seeks to de-mythologise Fleming's role and concentrates instead on the research and development work by Howard Florey, Ernest Chain and Norman Heatley at the Sir William Dunn Pathology Laboratory, Oxford, during World War II. Features Professors Gwyn Macfarlane, Ronald Hare and Charles Fletcher, and includes interview sequences with Sir Alexander Fleming, Sir Ernest Chain, Dr. Norman Heatley, Dr. Robert Coghill (Peoria, Illinois) and Lady Florey. Also includes much archive footage of historical interest, including film taken by Florey himself in 1940-42 of the production of penicillin in Oxford and of his journey to the U.S. in search of financial backing for the mass production of penicillin. Of the greatest interest to historians of twentieth century medicine and the biomedical sciences.