Medicine, May 6, 1946

Doctors who had been prescribing penicillin as casually as aspirin were suddenly socked in the midriff. The'reason: real knowledge about penicillin is pitifully small.

Unlike the finding of penicillin itself (TIME, May 15, 1944), the discovery of this fact was no accident. Three months ago two researchers discovered something that raised the eyebrows of penicillin experts, set them to rechecking furiously. Worried, they spot-checked hundreds of recently treated syphilis cases. The result was alarming: penicillin was apparently losing its wallop.

Last week, before the National Academy of Sciences, Johns Hopkins' crack syphilologist, Dr. Joseph Earle Moore, trotted into the open a...

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