1945

In June, isolation of first post-penicillin antibiotic-generating mold in sewage dump in harbor off Sardinia by Italian pharmacist Giuseppe Brotzu . He had noticed that sewage infested with Salmonella typhi was all but gone when it was dumped into the harbor, and bathers who occasionally drank it did not develop typhus, nor did those who ate raw shellfish from around the sewage outfall. The water contained the fungus from which cephalosporin C derived (Bo; Hamilton-Miller). In 1953, Edward Abraham, a member of Florey’s Oxford group, isolated Cephalosporin-C as the third antibiotic contained in Brotzu’s mold. It differed from penicillin by having much greater stability to acid, no penicillinamine or hydrolysis, and resistant to penicillinase (an enzyme, secreted by certain bacteria0 that can inactivate penicillin (Hamilton-Miller).