Drugs

Human inventiveness has been fanned by the fierce wings of war. New drugs of a remarkable healing potency are becoming commonplaces of science, and even the latest textbooks on many diseases require to have very considerable annotations and additions made to them. I personally have never failed to pay my tribute of respect and gratitude to M&B; although I am not competent to give you an exact description of how it works, it certainly has in my case always been attended by highly beneficial results. Then there is penicillin, which has broken upon the world just at a moment when human beings are being gashed and torn and poisoned by wounds on the field of war in enormous numbers, and when so many other diseases, hitherto insoluble, cry for treatment.

1944, 2 March. Royal College of Physicians,

London. (Dawn, 22.)

Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, treated him with M&B, a bacteriostatic sulfonamide made by May & Baker. WSC also used the term in reference to Moran and the famous chest specialist, Brigadier Bedford (Nel, 128, 130).

Science, prodded on by the urge of the age, has presented to us in the last decade a wonderful bevy of new and highly attractive medicinal personalities. We have M&B, penicillin, tetramycin, aureomycin and several others that I will not hazard my professional reputation in mentioning, still less in trying to place in order. 1951, 10 July. Royal College of Physicians, London. (Stemming, 91.)