Abacus, 2005. Foxing at page edges and on endpapers, creased spine, previous owner's name in black ink at top of front endpaper.

Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in his London laboratory in 1928 and its eventual development as the first antibiotic by a team at Oxford University headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain in 1942, led to the introduction of the most important family of drugs of the 20th century. Yet credit for penicillin is largely misplaced. Neither Fleming nor Florey and his associates ever made real money from their achievements; instead it was the American labs that won patents on penicillin's manufacture and drew royalties from its sale...