Abstract
A SPECIAL issue of the British Journal of Surgery (32, 105–224, 1944. 12s. 6d. net) is devoted to reports by British and United States medical men on the treatment with penicillin of battle casualties which has been carried out during the present War. Everybody who is at all interested in penicillin should read this valuable and beautifully produced record. It is only two years, Major-General L. T. Poole explains in his foreword, since Sir Howard Florey offered to the British War Office a small quantity of penicillin for trial in the Middle East. This was successfully flown out there, in spite of the difficulties of communications at that time. The strength of the first batches received by the Army varied from 30 to 40 Oxford units per mgm. Nowadays some of the preparations used have a strength of about 1,600 units per mgm. This is one measure of the progress made in this short period. The progress in production may be gauged by the fact that the Penicillin Team sent to North Africa in May 1943 was equipped with ten million units, whereas later it was possible to send by air regularly to Italy twenty million units a day.
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LAPAGE, G. Penicillin Treatment. Nature 154, 677–679 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154677a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154677a0