WASHINGTON – The National Museum of Health and Medicine has loaned two
objects that figure prominently in the perfection of penicillin as an everyday antibiotic --
a culture flask and a mounted specimen of penicillin – to Museum Victoria for display in
its Melbourne Museum in Carlton, Australia.
The objects were borrowed from the Washington, D.C. museum’s more than
12,000 historical medical objects and are now on display in the Melbourne Museum’s
Mind and Body Gallery in an exhibit titled, “Medical Melbourne,” which focuses on the
people and human drama behind biomedical advances and breakthroughs.
Melbourne Museum is one of four museums operated by Museum Victoria of
Melbourne, Australia, which was established in 1854 and holds a collection of national
and international significance and provides extensive outreach and Internet services.
For information, call (+ 61 3) 8341 7777 or visit melbourne.museum.vic.gov.au/.
“We have a number of items in our collection that tell the story of early penicillin
research,” said Alan Hawk, manager of the historical collections at the National Museum
of Health and Medicine. “We were quite pleased to be able to contribute to this
fascinating exhibit so far from here.”
The penicillin specimen on loan is a seven-day growth cultured by Alexander
Fleming at St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, England. It was Fleming who in 1928 was
culturing some bacteria when outside mold spores landed on one of his petri dishes and
when he noticed that bacteria did not grow near the mold he named it “penicillium notatum.” The specimen on loan to Museum Victoria was presented to the National
Museum of Health and Medicine by Col. Arthur de R. Barondes of the U.S. Army
Medical Corps, who assisted with clinical research on penicillin during World War II.
Australian-born Howard W. Florey, a pathologist at Oxford University who in
1940 developed a practical means of purifying penicillin and turning it into the first
antibiotic, made the penicillin culture flask on loan from a biscuit tin. Pharmaceutical
companies in the United States and Britain were able to commercially produce penicillin
about a year after Florey proved it was possible to mass-produce the drug. He shared a
Nobel Prize in 1945 with an Oxford colleague for their work on penicillin and in 1965
was named a baron. Florey died in 1968 at age 69.
The historical collection at The National Museum of Health and Medicine
documents changes in medical technology since the early 17 th century and includes
objects ranging in size from a suture needle to a two-ton MRI magnet, such as X-ray
equipment, microscopes, surgical instruments, numismatics, and anatomical models.
The collection is made available for the education of medical professionals, Department
of Defense personnel, historians, and the public through exhibits in the museum, loans
to other institutions, and individualized study.
The National Museum of Health and Medicine, founded as the Army Medical
Museum in 1862 to study and improve medical conditions during the American Civil
War, is an element of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Open daily except Dec.
25 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., the museum is located at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center, 6900 Georgia Ave. and Elder Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Public telephone
