How an old piece of mould could fetch £15,000 (well, it did save millions of lives)
IT looks like something you might find on a piece of stale bread.
Yet an inch-wide, unprepossessing patch of yellowy-green mould could fetch up to £15,000 when it is sold at auction.
It has an extraordinary claim to fame, having played a central role in one of the most significant medical breakthroughs.
It was cultivated by Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming, whose discovery of penicillin in 1928 paved the way for the development of antibiotics and saved millions of lives.
Mounted on a glass disc, it is signed by the scientist and inscribed on the reverse ‘The mould which makes penicillin’.
It is part of a remarkable archive kept by the biologist’s niece, Mary Anne Johnston, which is being released for sale at Bonhams in London on March 1.
Sarah Lindberg, of Bonhams, said: ‘There cannot be too many more valuable pieces of mould in the world.’
The collection also contains photographs of Fleming, from Lochfield, Ayrshire, notebooks and correspondence – including from an eminent surgeon, thanking him for saving the life of his ten-yearold daughter. The surgeon says: ‘I am convinced as one can be that her recovery can be attributed to penicillin.’
Another letter, from ‘Uncle Alec’ to his niece, gives news of his own recovery from illness and his debt to the very discovery for which he was famed, as he writes: ‘Thanks for your letter of sympathy. I am now well – thanks to penicillin…’
Fleming shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for his discovery.