First 'wonderdrug' on display
Updated on 10 May 2007
An exhibition on the world's first "wonderdrug" - penicillin - and changing attitudes to antibiotics with the onset of superbugs launches on Thursday.
Penicillin: A Story of Triumph and Tragedy looks at the introduction of the drug and the emergence of resistant bacteria in the 1950s which led to many deaths of hospitalised victims in the worldwide Asian flu epidemic of 1957.
The event, at London's Science Museum, examines the response of the time, to develop new drugs to combat the resistant strains. It contrasts today's experience, confronting another generation of resistant bacteria such as MRSA.
Created by the museum's principal curator of medicine, Dr Robert Bud, the exhibition coincides with his book on the subject.
Dr Bud said: "As avian flu threatens us today, we are marking the 50th anniversary of the Asian flu which swept the world in 1957. Many sufferers then experienced antibiotic resistant pneumonia.
"Less than 30 years after Alexander Fleming had discovered penicillin, across the world, the public had learned the reality of resistance. Then new penicillins were discovered but we cannot rely on the same good fortune today.
"It is therefore appropriate to reflect on our changing conceptions of Penicillin, the drug of the 20th century. It was the first of the antibiotics that, for decades after the Second World War, underpinned a popular belief that the threat of infectious disease had at last met its match.
"With the widespread awareness of the challenge of 'superbugs' these hopes have faded. No longer can we afford to brand penicillin as a wonderdrug."
The exhibition features artefacts from some of Fleming's earliest penicillin mould to a fermenter with which research for modern penicillins was conducted and a lipstick which might once have contained penicillin.
It shows how penicillin has been portrayed in magazines, in films, on stamps and at the 1951 Festival of Britain, and how the challenge of antibiotic resistant bacteria has been portrayed in the past.
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