Medicine: Humble Beginnings

Since the discovery of mold-grown penicillin 20 years ago, most researchers have done their looking for new antibiotics in other molds. But apparently many new wonder drugs were hiding in many other unlikely places. Dr. John Robert Brown, of the University of Texas Medical Branch, has reported (in Texas Reports on Biology and Medicine) that he has extracted an antibiotic (thus far unproved) from ragweed. Last week, at a National Institute of Health symposium in Washington, new germ killers were reported from other strange sources:

¶Hop cones (the part used in making beer) produced two promising antibiotics, said Dr. W. D. Maclay,...

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