MANY USES FOR PENICILLIN

Southland Times, Issue 25796, 6 October 1945, Page 5

MANY USES FOR PENICILLIN

FEWER OPERATIONS REQUIRED

LONDON, October 4, “I feel like a man singing at his own graveside,” said Dr Dickson Wright, the famous surgeon, at bt. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington,, when referring to the use of penicillin once it was 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 and septic pneumonia. Pneumonia will, in the future, be handled so easily that there will be no chance of any complication. Social diseases, which have exercised the minds of politicians so much, will no longer be a problem. “Sir Alexander Fleming, by toe 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 by 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.