Winston Churchill’s race to secure penicillin before D-Day found in notes

Winston Churchill’s push to obtain penicillin in time to treat the victims expected of D -Day was revealed in documents seen by BBC News.

Official documents unearthed by the national archives reveal the Prime Minister’s frustration and concern about slow progress by ensuring supplies of what was then considered a brand new “Wonder Drug”.

The BBC was shown on the newspapers before the anniversary of the landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Even months after D-Day, the Prime Minister in time of war has called “very disappointing” efforts and deplored the fact that the United States was “so far” despite the fact that drugs were a “British discovery”.

Penicillin was discovered in London by Professor Alexander Fleming in 1928. Despite attempts to produce a drug usable from the mold killing bacteria, this had not been carried out at the start of the Second World War.

But a team of Oxford of scientists, led by Howard Florey, carried out the first successful tests. With a difficult large-scale production in the United Kingdom, they brought their research in the United States, where pharmaceutical companies have expanded production.

Before the development of penicillin, blood intoxication could follow still minor injuries without healing available. Thus, with the anticipation of the enormous military effort to come, the supplies of the drug were considered essential.

At the beginning of 1944, the Prime Minister complained to his ministers of the inability of Great Britain to produce it on a large scale. He scribbled in red ink on a report by the Ministry of Offer who said that the Americans produced larger quantities: “I’m sorry that we cannot produce more”.

Later in the year, in response to the explanations of civil servants, he said: “Your report on penicillin showing that we should only obtain a tenth of the expected production this year, is very disappointing.”

In another report, he indicates: “Allow me to have proposals for a more abundant supply of Great Britain”.

Less than a fortnight before D-Day, health officials could point out that sufficient supplies had been obtained, most of the United States, but only for fighting victims.

Dr. Jessamy Carlson, specialist in modern records in the national archives, said: “The files give an overview of the extraordinary levels of preparation undertaken before the landings of D -Day.

“Only six weeks earlier, penicillin simply reaches our quantities which will allow it to play a major role in improving the results for service staff injured in action.”

But what is now considered the first real antibiotic would not be entirely available for the general public before 1946.

A telegram in the same files shows a doctor from Cornwall, who treated a 10 -year -old child in 1944, pleading with the drug authorities: “No hopeless hope”.

The plea has been rejected, with supplies that would only be available for military use.

With antibiotics that are now part of daily life (and probably too widely used), the documents seen by the BBC have shed new light on the urgent efforts of Churchill and others to obtain one of these drugs for the first time to save lives during the fight to release Northern Europe.