Adventures of the Antibiotic Man

HE HAS been immortalised as the Scottish scientist whose ‘lucky’ discovery led to millions of lives being saved around the world.

But a new study of Sir Alexander Fleming has shed new light on what happened once the legendary figure switched his focus away from the laboratory and on to the world stage.

The biography reveals fascinating details of how Fleming, during the last decade of his life, enjoyed the level of celebrity today associated with David Beckham, touring the world and being fted by famous actresses, singers, leading politicians and millions of ordinary people.

White-haired, tweed-suited and unassuming, Fleming had a song dedicated to him by the singer Josephine Baker in a Barcelona nightclub, and gave sex idol Marlene Dietrich a lump of mould after she told him his horoscope.

On another occasion, Spanish bullfighters knelt before the man who discovered penicillin. And in the course of several trips to the United States, Fleming befriended actor Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and had an audience at the White House with the then president, Harry Truman.

But despite being courted by many of the most famous people in the world between 1945 and his death in 1955, the Ayrshire farmer’s son, who won a scholarship to pay for his education, appears to have been only mildly amused by his celebrity status.

Kevin Brown, the author of Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution, which is due out next year, has closely examined the scientist’s twilight years.

He said: "The last 10 years of Fleming’s life were amazing. He was invited all over the world and honours were showered on him. He had people like Marlene Dietrich and Josephine Baker clamouring to meet him. During the Spanish visit in 1948, he even had bullfighters kneeling before him. I think he did find that a bit much."

Brown, who is the curator of the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum at St Mary’s Hospital in London where Fleming worked, said the scientist was taken aback when Baker, an icon of the art deco movement, picked him out of a crowd at a nightclub in Barcelona in 1948.

"He was very embarrassed by the whole thing. He was being introduced to the ex-queen of Italy at the time and had to ignore her to take the ovation from the audience," Brown said.

Fleming, who rarely gave anything more than the basic details of what he did in his diary, was moved to write that Baker’s attentions were "a little too demonstrative for my own comfort". He added: "I don’t know what the queen [of Italy] thought of it."

And of his rapturous reception in Spain in general, Fleming said: "They seemed to think I was Winston [Churchill] or Princess Elizabeth or the current queen."

Marlene Dietrich - the Madonna of her day - became interested in Fleming after two members of her family were treated - and possibly saved - with penicillin.

"She was performing in London and expressed a desire to meet him. A letter was sent to him, inviting him to dinner and he accepted," Brown said.

"She told his horoscope for him. As a thank you, he gave her a sample of his Penicillium notatum mould."

Fleming’s diaries do not, however, record what he felt about Dietrich.

"He wasn’t the sort of person who commented much on anything. He was a typical taciturn Scot. However, he got on well with most people and also seems to have been attractive to women."

Fleming’s ‘world tour’ with beautiful second wife Amalia Voureka, a hero of the Greek resistance during the war and a fellow microbiologist, saw him go to Argentina, the United States, Canada, Italy, Belgium, France, Spain, Greece, India and Pakistan.

Fleming and Voureka, who was nearly 30 years younger than him, were met everywhere by overawed scientists and cheering crowds of people.

Celebrities sought out Fleming until the day he died from a heart attack at the age of 74. On the day of his death, he had been due to have lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.

Dr Milton Wainwright, one of the UK’s leading microbiologists who last year wrote a scientific paper on Fleming’s work, said it was difficult for people today to understand what an effect penicillin had on health care.

"At a time when you could cut yourself in the garden, get an infection and be dead by the end of the week, penicillin was like a miracle.

"I’m not surprised people reacted like they did. In those days people were less cynical. You could have heroes.

"He was known as a bit of a dour Scot, but when he got his second wife, who was quite attractive, I think he decided, ‘I’ll have a good time here.’"

Professor Hugh Pennington, head of the Aberdeen University’s department of medical microbiology, worked with a contemporary of Fleming’s at St Mary’s, Ronald Hare, in London in the 1960s.

"He described Fleming going to Canada during a heatwave and he was still wearing his thick tweed suit," Pennington said. "I didn’t get the impression that his fame changed him all that much. He still went on dabbling in microbiology.

"But he fell under the influence of his second wife quite substantially. I think she ran things for him basically."

Science for art's sake

SIR Alexander Fleming was perhaps the only microbiologist ever to view the discipline as an art as well as a science.

Fleming, who had a certain childlike playfulness, was a member of Chelsea Arts Club and used to paint pictures using differently coloured bacteria.

His mould paintings depicted a range of subjects including a ballerina, the house he lived in and a guardsman.

He appears to have been quite proud of his work and put on an exhibition for George V and his wife Queen Mary when they came to open medical school buildings at St Mary’s Hospital in London in 1933.

Fleming, who told the story against himself, described how Queen Mary was less than impressed, saying: "I don’t see the point of these."

Fleming museum curator Kevin Brown said: "The Queen Mother, I think, tried to smooth things over because she was the president of the hospital from 1930 and she knew Fleming very well."

Brown added that Fleming’s curiosity and sense of fun may have been part of his genius.

"I think without his playfulness he wouldn’t have taken advantage of a chance contamination of his plates with penicillin."