Penicillin and other Antibiotics

The concentrated research effort on antibiotic substances during the last six or seven years has provided results and new materials of the greatest interest to medical science, to chemistry and to general biology. The relatively recent nature of this work, most of which was undertaken as a direct consequence of the clinical success of penicillin, has obscured to a great extent the fact that work on antibiotics had been carried on since the middle of the nineteenth century, in the fields both of medical microbiology and of plant pathology. The organisers of the symposium on "Penicillin and other Antibiotics" at the British Association meeting at Dundee, by bringing together Sections B (Chemistry), I (Physiology) and K (Botany), sought to arrange their programme so that these various aspects were touched upon.