St.Mary's Hospital Honours Sir Alexander Fleming (1954)

Your Royal Highness, Mr. Mayor, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, it is my honour and duty, sir, to bid you most cordially welcome to this school in its centenary year. Since 1800... ...is a worthy one. We celebrate this year not only our centenary, but also the 25th anniversary of the first discovery of what was later to be called penicillin, the outstanding work of a scholar and member of this school. May I now invite you, sir, to make this presentation to him on behalf of his colleagues here in appreciation of his great services to us and to mankind. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for asking me to come here to present this present to Sir Alexander. I am in no position in the present company to explain what Sir Alexander has done, because I'm sure you all know very much more about it than I do. I do know enough, I think, to hope that I shall never have to make use of your discovery. I am particularly delighted, as Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, to have this occasion, or this opportunity, to present to the Rector of the University of Edinburgh these, on behalf of the St. Mary's Medical School, these, I believe they're sauceboats, but I think they'd be better known as brothboats. Your Royal Highness, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you, sir, for the kind things you said, and I've got to thank my colleagues for the wonderful terrines which I've just been presented with on this, the 25th anniversary of the publication of Penicillin. It was just 25 years ago that the word first appeared in print. It's a brand new word, and people keep on asking me why I ever christened anything Penicillin. Well, if you knew a little botany, you'd know, because the substance is made by a penicillium, so it's perfectly obvious to call it Penicillin. Something happened which eventually led to Penicillin, but would I ever have noticed it but for the previous work done in association with my teacher and master, Armroth Wright. See, when the first war came, we worked together in Boulogne, and we saw thousands of septic wounds that we could do very little for. The work which we did then in Boulogne and in the laboratories here was good work, I think. It's work I'm proud to have been associated with, and it made me special interested in substances that cured microbes. So I noticed something that perhaps others had missed, and that observation 25 years ago has brought us all together today. See, I made the observation that I don't forget what I owe to my teacher, Sir Armroth Wright, perhaps the greatest man ever to have been associated with Mary's Hospital Medical School in his hundred years of existence. Now, fortune's been kind to me. You referred, sir, to the fact that we're both associated with Edinburgh University. Well, I thought it was very fitting that the Chancellor of that University should give the Rector of that University a present in a London school, a school in the London University. Well, that's very fitting indeed, sir. And this, sir, is penicillin day. I have here a specimen of the culture of the mould that made penicillin to begin with and continues to make it. There are not many of them in existence. I had the honour to give one to Her Majesty the Queen Mother some years ago. I hope you will accept another one.