PENICILLIN’S MARVELS

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 October 1945, Page 5

PENICILLIN’S MARVELS

LEADING SURGEON’S “LAMENT” (Rec. 10.50 a.m.) LONDON. October 4. “I feel like a man singing at hrs own graveside,” said Dickson Wright, the famous surgeon of Saint Mary s Hospital, Paddington, referring to the use of penicillin, once it is made available to the general public. “The use of penicillin is going to deprive us of a great deal of our surgical work. I have seen wiped out at one stroke a lot of operations I have been performing. There will be no more carbuncles, boils, child-bed fever, or sceptic pneumonia. Pnepmonia will in future be handled so easily, there is no chance of complication. Social diseases which exercise the minds of politicians so much will no longer be a problem. Sir Alexander Fleming by the discovery of penicillin will have done more people in the medical profession out of a job than any other person at any time. He discovered a cure for scores of diseases, because penicillin can be applied to everything—obstetrics, surgery and medicine.” Dr. Wright added that efforts are being made to see if penicillin could be given by the mouth instead of injection. Experiments were being made with sugar coated pills, lozenges and snuff. It was recently found possible to give penicillin in the form of a very fine spray through the mouth.