The First Use of Penicillin in the United States

The first use of penicillin in the United States occurred in 1942 and saved a moribund patient who had -hemolytic streptococcal sep-sis. Some of the circumstances involved in obtaining and using the drug are described. Ann Intern Med. 2008;149:135-136. www.annals.org For author affiliation, see end of text. The first dose of penicillin given in the United States wasadministered at Yale–New Haven Hospital on March 1942 to a patient dying of septicemia. As a young Yale house officer, I found myself involved in what few of us then realized was a very profound sequence of events. It was my ninth month of service, and I was an acting assis-tant resident. On the private floor of the Yale–New Haven Isola-tion Building, a very ill 33-year-old patient had -hemolytic streptococcal sepsis. She had run a steady temperature of 103 ° F to 106 ° F for 4 weeks (Figure [1]). Her private physician, Dr. John Bumstead, per-suaded Dr. John F. Fulton, another ill patient of his with a severe pulmonary infection, to try to obtain a new drug—penicillin. The drug was not yet available in the United States. Dr. Howard Florey had reported on the use of penicillin in England in 1941, and Dr. Fulton was aware of Florey’s studies (2). Since their Oxford days together, Fulton and Florey had remained friends. In fact, Dr. Florey’s children were living with the Ful-tons in New Haven, Connecticut, to escape the German bombs falling on London in 1941