Section 247 Penicillin
"But we're also working on penicillin. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 infoA substance secreted by a mold we name Penicillium! ”
Wu Liande didn't wonder how Yang Chao knew the name of penicillin, maybe it was one of his subordinates who said it by mistake.
"That's the official who misremembered."
Yang Chao hurriedly played sloppy.
Yang Chao forgot for a while what Penicillium and Streptomyces were discovered by Wu Liande.
Streptomyces was naturally found in plague-resistant bacteria, and because of its dense chain-like shape under the microscope, the ghostly Wu Liande named it Streptomyces.
It is not difficult to discover the principle of streptomyces and streptomyces inhibiting plague bacteria, the difficulty is to isolate the streptomycin secreted by Streptomyces, Wu Liande led people to do thousands of tests, and finally obtained streptomycin crystals through an air-drying method.
Streptomycin is a biological enzyme, but the gold is expensive, and it will lose its vitality if it is not served well, at first Wu Liande was easy to filter and heat the streptomyces, but the things obtained were all dead, without any activity, and could not cure people at all.
Finally, it was found that the crystals dried by a fan at room or low temperature could remain active.
In fact, penicillin and streptomycin are the best way to freeze drying, which directly freezes the filter solution into ice, and then air-dried it in a frozen state, and the activity is best maintained. But Wu Liande hasn't found out yet, and Yang Chao doesn't know the principle at all, so Wu Liande's air-drying method is the last method.
"Tell me about the plague?"
As soon as it came to his major, Wu Liande immediately gushed and reported the results of his many tests to Yang Chao.
"What about other diseases? For example, traumatic infection? ”
Yang Chao asked again. He was more concerned about whether streptomycin could inhibit trauma.
Wu Liande shook his head, they also did many experiments, and found that streptomycin is not ideal for external infections, but has an excellent effect on some infectious diseases such as plague.
Receiving Wu Liande's negative answer, Yang Chao couldn't help but be a little disappointed, and then thought of the penicillin they just said.
"What's going on with penicillin, I think I've heard of it somewhere. Tell me about it. ”
Wu Liande immediately spoke.
When they discovered that penicillin was actually unintentional, when they discovered that the drug could be extracted from the fungus, they found it like they had discovered a treasure trove, and the laboratory technicians were desperately looking for fungi and bacteria from all kinds of places, in the soil, in the air, and even from dirty places like latrines.
As for Penicillium, it is very easy to come, because this fungus is too common, for example, the steamed bun is put outside and forgotten, and after a while it is found to be full of green hair, then the green hair is Penicillium.
This is how Wu Liande's penicillium was discovered, and penicillin was immediately carried out to isolate and other tests.
"Penicillin also has an inhibitory effect on some bacteria, but we have not tested tetanus bacilli, and if we can, then penicillin can treat traumatic infections."
Wu Liande replied honestly.
Yang Chao nodded: "Then let's try it quickly." In the past, how many of our soldiers died not on the battlefield, but in the hospital, from infection, which makes people sad to think about. It is up to you experts to prevent this tragedy. ”
Wu Liande nodded repeatedly.
So Wu Liande focused his research from plague bacteria to trauma, and it turned out that penicillin had a miraculous effect on various traumatic infections, and immediately reported the results of his discovery to Yang Chao.
Yang Chao immediately instructed him to find a way to produce it as soon as possible.
Wu Liande said that penicillin production is easier than streptomycin because it is easier to cultivate, and this kind of green hair fungus that can grow in the air is not picky eaters, and can eat everything from steamed bread and rice.
Unlike Streptomyces, Wu Liande is still using raw meat as a medium, which is quite expensive.
With experience with streptomycin, penicillin production was quickly on track.
Wu Liande took out the strain, cultivated it with a large number of steamed buns, and then dried it to crystallize.
But it's not over, Wu Liande is still continuing to research, this drug can indeed inhibit traumatic infection, but how much to dosage and how to use it is a knowledge, as a medical doctor, he is still more inclined to academics.
Yang Chao asked Wu Liande for a batch of products, recruited a few military doctors who participated in the research, and asked them to fly to Russia with the medicine, and contacted Stolypin, saying that he had produced a drug that could treat trauma and planned to try it for the wounded of the Russian army.
The casualties rate of the First World War was extremely high, a large number of wounded were wailing in the rear, and the Russians were notoriously poor in terms of medical conditions and medical standards, so the Russians had no reason to refuse.
Yang Chao asked these people to test the test method they had developed directly on the Russian wounded, and the Russians were actually not at ease, they were looking for soldiers who were so infected that they were almost certain to die.
As a result, a considerable number of soldiers were saved, which caused a sensation at once, and the Russians expressed their desire to buy these drugs in large quantities, after all, to treat a veteran, you can call up a rural labor force less, and the most important thing is that these people can kill people on the battlefield, without training, saving a lot of time.
Now the front line is in, after the German counteroffensive, the Russian army has suffered defeats, and the Germans have lost more than 20,000 people, but they have eliminated the entire 250,000 Russian troops, making Hindenburg and Ludendorff famous in the first battle, and at this time they are like the first generals of the German army.
The more terrible the losses on the front, the more nervous the soldiers, the Russians can only continue to mobilize, and the arms purchased from Shandong are not worried, because the Chinese arms are of good quality, and the price is low, which is three percent lower than the French goods, which makes the Russians like the most, the same funds can buy more arms, who does not like it.
So the Russians were not very tight on money, and they spent a lot of dollars hoping to buy all the penicillin.
"Penicillin is not easy to produce."
After the people sent by Yang Chao exchanged telegrams with Yang Chao, they priced the amount of treatment for one person at $100 on the grounds of production difficulties, and $100 would save a person's life, which was still very cheap.
As a result, this kind of small glass bottle, the penicillin crystal powder of the rubber stopper, entered the Russian military series in large quantities.
Obviously, this kind of vial came from Yang Chao's handwriting, a kind of bad taste, which brought out the penicillin vial when he was a child.
The Germans soon learned of it, and they learned of it through the Russian captives, and immediately sent a telegram to Shandong.
The German governor-general Walder did not leave Shandong, but served as an adviser to Yang Chao's newly formed government, and he did not want to leave Shandong, and the German government believed that Wald's continuation of the new government in Qingdao would help the Germans to recover Qingdao after the war.
Wald spoke to Yang Chao on behalf of the German government.
Yang Chao said that the $100 per bottle was ordered by the Russians, and his current monthly production capacity is less than 10,000 bottles, which is not enough for the Russians to use a customer.
The Germans said that they hoped that Yang Chao would pay at least half, and they were even willing to raise the price and buy it at a price of $120, while Yang Chao asked for $200, otherwise it would be difficult to explain to the Russians, saying that the extra part was liquidated damages for the Russians.
The Germans gritted their teeth and agreed, and they were more short of manpower than the Russians.
Although Germany is short of manpower, France is more short of manpower than Germany, Germany has only mobilized 4 percent of the school-age youth, while France has mobilized 8 percent, and their labor resources are almost exhausted, so the French are more eager for this life-saving medicine.
The French also came with orders, and the price was raised to $300, which is not high, you must know that on the European black market, the price of a small bottle of penicillin is now noisy to $800, and many of them are bought by the soldiers themselves, who hope to save their lives when they are injured and lack of medicine.
The French gritted their teeth and made a big purchase, and the British had a lot of money, so it was naturally impossible to see that their soldiers were without medicines, so the British also came to buy, and the price had risen to $500 at this time, and the black market price had reached $1,000.
Yang Chao never advertised, but war is the best advertisement.
And the factory was also moved from the northeast to Shandong, because Wu Liande found that the warm Shandong was more suitable for cultivating penicillin bacteria.
Yang Chao desperately let Wu Liande expand the penicillin factory, he himself has no opinion, that is, Yang Chao is so expensive, quite complaining, Wu Liande has the morality of a doctor, he has made the Hippocratic oath, he thinks that this is a life-saving medicine, should not be sold so expensive.
But Yang Chao asked him, expensive is the choice of the market, if a general who has spent a lot of money to train and an ordinary soldier need to be rescued at the same time, but can only save one, who to choose? This question is difficult for Wu Liande to answer, Yang Chao said that if he is not willing to choose, let the market choose, the price is to ensure that the resources are used in a more efficient place, if not let the market choose, the doctor has to face the moral choice.
Yang Chao also said that the best way to save lives is to increase the production of medicines as soon as possible, if it can be increased to 1 million bottles per month, it is equivalent to saving the lives of 1 million people.
In addition to asking for medicine, the foreigners also wanted to get penicillin strains, and now they have learned through the omnipresent spies that penicillin is obtained from a fungal solution, but they do not know what kind of fungus it is.
If you want to find it slowly, then you don't know when, in order to find Streptomyces, the later generations of Waxman took his students to screen more than 10,000 strains, at this time the British did not have time to select 10,000 fungi to get the strains, not to mention that Waxman discovered streptomycin that was after the 1930s, penicillin from the discovery to the refinement of Westerners for more than ten years, the current scientific development, germology or cutting-edge science, the British can not find too many experts, There is no systematic approach to research.
So if you want to overcome this difficulty, it can't be solved in a few years, if Wu Liande didn't have Yang Chao's help and a little luck, they wouldn't have been able to get it out so quickly.
In a word, without strains, foreigners can't get them, and with strains, they may not be able to get them.
But with the fungus, the foreigners always have hope, so they do everything possible to get the fungus, but when the Germans with the closest relationship with Yang Chao begged for it, Yang Chao did not give it, other countries can only take other methods, for a time all kinds of commercial spies in Shandong are active, but unfortunately, the penicillin factories are all military management, and they have never been able to succeed. (To be continued.) )