Medicine: Mold for Infections

A marvelous mold that saves lives when sulfa drugs fail was described in the British Lancet last month by Professor Howard Walter Florey and colleagues of Oxford.+ The healing principle, called penicillin, is extracted from the velvety-green Penicillium notatum, a relative of the cheese mold. Although it does not kill germs, the mold stops the growth of streptococci and staphylococci with a power "as great or greater than that of the most powerful antiseptics known." Once the germs are checked, the body's white blood cells finish them.

Tried in ten different cases for a...

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