1943

In May-June, pilot units for penicillin therapy at Bushnell General Hospital (Utah) and Halloran General Hospital (Staten Island) convince U.S. army that penicillin was vital to war effort (Neushul, 209-212). Penicillin also shown to be effective against gonorrhea bacilli (Mayo Clinic) and syphilis (John Mahoney at PHS hospital at Staten Island (Parascandola II, 20-21). Use of Salvarsan for treatment of syphilis begins to decrease, giving way to far less toxic penicillin (Bäumler, 235). Waksman, at Rutgers Agricultural Experiment Station, identifies a strain of actinomycetes cultured from throat of a chick as Streptomyces Griseus, which yielded a substance that inhibited a number of common gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria (streptomycin) (Dowling, 159). Cf. account of F. Ryan: On 19 October Waksman’s doctoral student Albert Schatz discovered two colonies of actinomyces that killed gram-positive and negative bacteria (including TB germs), one sample from a throat swab of a sick chick and the second and more productive from a sample of heavily manured soil (F. Ryan, 218-221). Cf. account of Daniel (207-214), who admits that Schatz, albeit a student, “did most of the actual work,” but “Waksman was the expert” who, with other members of his group, “had developed the methods of investigation that Schatz used so assiduously and effectively” (213).