 by Dupont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Thomas Mitchell and George Culloran in the story of Tennessee. Before we begin our play, here's news about the get acquainted author, Dupont paint dealers all over the country are featuring. Your dealer is now advertising a special coupon worth 25 cents when you purchase one gallon or more of Dupont's Speedyzy wall finish. Speedyzy comes in 11 colors. Be sure to see the three new spring colors, Empire Green, Dusky Rose and Twilight Blue. Use one of these soft glowing shades for the room you've been intending to fix up. Dupont Speedyzy covers even figured wallpaper quickly, easily and economically. Now you can redecorate most any room for less than $2.75. Remember, Speedyzy dries within one hour. So look up the name of the Dupont paint dealer in your telephone directory this evening or tomorrow. Get one of the new coupons worth 25 cents when you purchase one gallon or more of this new easy to use wall finish. If there isn't a Dupont dealer in your community, drop us a postcard and we'll be glad to send you the name of the nearest place you can buy Speedyzy. Just address a card to the Dupont company, radio section Wilmington, Delaware. And now for this evening's play. Tonight, the Dupont cavalcade brings you a story of victory out of the long and unceasing war. The war of the scientists, soldiers of life against the forces of disease and death. The story of the discovery of the life-preserving chemical agent, Penicillin. Dupont presents the story of Penicillin starring Thomas Mitchell as the narrator and George Caloris as Dr. Howard W. Florey on the cavalcade of America. One to whom each man must listen at the last. One his ears are deaf to any other voice. And in the darkness he receives with silent thankfulness the blessed sacrament of timeless rest I bring. And yet to delay my coming for a little time has been the immemorial struggle of mankind wherein there have been heroes, traitors and a few great leaders towering above all the rest of such a leader I speak now. You will be grateful to him as I am for he has eased my sorry labors from henceforth even unto the last generation. Doctor. She called you doctor. She's dying. We know, no cure. Is there then no comfort left for her but mine? We've tried everything known to medical science. There's no cure for her. But doctor, in the earth there is a cure. Look to the earth. The earth? Yes, in the earth. Listen. And in the fourth verse of the 38th chapter of the book of Ecclesiasticus it is written the most high have created medicines out of the earth and the wise man will not abhor them. What does it mean? Pasteur knew what it meant. Doctor, listen to the lyric Pasteur. In the soil. Yes, there is something in the soil, a substance, an organism, a growth, something fatal to the deadliest microbe. In the earth itself? Listen doctor. Anthrax, the deadly Bacillus anthracis. In some soils it lives. It flourishes. Not the soils it does not live. It dies. There is something in the soil fatal to this microbe. What could it be? What can it be? I only know that it is there. I have done my part. My time is past. Others must find it. You must find it. It is there. Such a weapon for the struggle as we have never known. Doctor. Doctor. Your cure is there. With all your skill and all your knowledge and all the wondrous instruments of your science, seek it out and quickly. Work quickly, doctor, for the time is running short. We stand no longer now at the bedside of the peacetime sick. We stand amidst the wreckage of bombshaft at London. We stand at Dunkirk, you and I, answering as best we can the dread question on the lips of 10,000 stricken men. We stand at the bedside of an English soldier who wipes the cold sweat from his pale young face and tries to smile. I'm comfortable, thank you, sir. You want a cigarette? I'd like it very much. Here you are. That's good. I'm called Alfie by my pals. Yes, I know. But you must rest now. It's not so easy. They keep bringing them in, don't they? 200 in the last hour. Like me? Some of them ways. I have a pal among them. He wouldn't know about the chap called Bentley, Ted Bentley. He caught a Jerry bullet and a leg. Would you know about him? Yes, I know about him. He isn't Ted, he... You can tell me, I'd like to know. He's gone this morning. It was only a leg wound, just a leg wound. The wound was infected. Blood poise being set in while it was waiting to be taken off the beach. Poor old Ted. Why did it happen? I saw them give himself a run the beach. Didn't that work? No, Alfie, it didn't work. It's a good medicine, isn't it? That's what they say. Yes, Alfie, it's a fine medicine. One of the best there is. One of the most powerful, but there are some germs it cannot kill. Germs that get into wounds and bone cells and bring on poisoning. Is that what those lads have? Poison? Yes. They call it septicemia. Maybe I've gotten a call to ask, but you seem to know quite a bit about all this. What are the odds for them? Must I tell you, Alfie? Oh, we should tell me. It's a war. You don't keep back such things in a war. What are the odds? Seven out of ten. Seven will lose. Only three will win. Even with the sulfur drugs? Yes, Alfie. If all the sulfur drugs, the odds would have been nine out of ten. From septicemia, Alfie. Thank you. Now will you tell me? If you want to know. What are the odds for me? What have I got? Septicemia, Alfie. You will remember Alfie, Dr. Floyd, when he closed his eyes and put his hand in mine and spoke no more. He is one you'll remember among thousands. Yet these were not my triumphs and your failures. It was only the odds. Those overwhelming odds that determined whether men would stay with you or go with me. And only a miracle could turn that fateful mathematics to your favor. And yet that miracle had already come to pass. Do you remember those words that you were to discover? They were the words of Dr. Alexander Fleming of St. Mary's Hospital in London ten years before Dunkirk. I stood at his side too, as I've stood by yours. I had great hope. Today I found my culture of bacillus stathilococcus contaminated by a small spot of green mold. I was about to destroy the culture and begin again when I was struck by an odd thought. Stathilococcus is the most fatal of the septicemia or blood poisoning bacilli. One of the deadliest germs known to science. Yet in this culture, the green mold lived and grew. It's a strange phenomenon taken place in the culture. A halo of transparent fluid surrounds the mold. And that means dead germs. There is something generated by the mold that kills the stathilococcus. I have made a filtrate from the mold and it definitely kills staph, streps, and pneumococci. It is one of the most powerful germ killers in existence. And the beauty of it is that the mold is simply penicillium notatum, like ordinary bread mold. It's in the air, in the earth, everywhere. I am writing a paper on my findings. I shall call the filtrate, penicillium. We stand at Dunkirk, Dr. Floyd. And by the bedside of 10,000 stricken men, a decade after the miracle had come to pass, the decade that saw the rise of a man named Adolf Hitler, measured often time by names that men will long remember, Madrid, Munich, and again Dunkirk. Time to resurrect a miracle. Do you remember, doctor? Time to start the work that was to bring forth one of the greatest miracles in all medical history. Gentlemen, we're after the killer bugs. Every bacteriologist in England is now at war against the wound infecters. New experiments take too long, so we'll re-examine old experiments. And what are we after, Dr. Floyd? Something more powerful and less toxic than the sulfonylamide stuff to change. Something that will work in the presence of pus. That's a pretty tall order, Dr. Floyd. Pretty tall war, Dr. Abraham. I'm not complaining, but where in heaven's name do we begin? With these old publications here on the table, the research of a generation, much of it worthless, maybe all of it, but we'll take them one at a time. Now, here's something. The antibacterial action of cultures of a penicillium. Who's is it, Dr. Floyd? It's the work of Dr. Alexander Fleming. I'm going to fix this morning, Dr. Chain. I'm just going to check on them. If they're not all dead by now, it really will be a miracle. Well, Fleming's discovery worked in the test tube. It might work with animals. How do you divide them up? Evenly. They're all thoroughly infected and strep to cell eye. The 25 of them have been given penicillin. The other 25 haven't. Well, there we are. I'm afraid you're right about that miracle, Dr. Floyd. One's in this cage of stone dead. They're the ones that didn't have the penicillin, though. Dr., look here. The others, they're all alive. Then penicillin works. Not only alive. I know why they're as healthy as they've never seen a strep bug. Flory, I know I ought to lose my head. I've seen so many experiments turn sour, but I can't help it. I'm excited. These 25 had enough bugs in them to kill a Nazi army, but they aren't dead. The stuff is working and it isn't toxic. We're on to something. I think you're right, but I'm trying not to be excited. Our next step is, let's see. Penicillin is non-toxic to guinea pigs, right, Majora? Well, we'll keep on with another batch if we continue to get good results. Well, we'll try penicillin downstairs in the clinic. Yes, on the cases for which they hold out no hope. Now we're getting some more. Yes. If penicillin works for human beings, then we have seen a miracle. Listening to Thomas Mitchell as the narrator and George Caloris as Dr. Flory in the story of penicillin on the cavalcade of America sponsored by DuPont, maker of better things for a better living through chemistry. One of DuPont's better things, which will help you to raise a better victory garden, is semisand seed treatment for vegetables and flowers. Treating seeds with semisand helps to destroy many of the fungus and bacterial organisms on the seeds. By reducing the possibilities of thin stems and weak or stunted plants, DuPont semisand helps produce better yields. The story of penicillin is the story of the long search for a life-saving agent against the death dropped by sulfur-resisting staphylococcus infections. It is a story of the unceasing war of science against the ageless enemy, disease. It is a story of hope that arose from the battlefronts of this war. As our DuPont cavalcade play continues, a play starring Thomas Mitchell as narrator and George Caloris as Dr. Flory, an American doctor who has heard about Flory's search for a new and more powerful medicine than the sulfur drugs, begins an experiment suggested by a pamphlet published in 1929. My baby isn't going to die, Dr. Graham. My baby isn't going to die, is she, doctor? Please, you mustn't hope too much. We've never tried this treatment for this type of disease. You can't tell me I mustn't help her. She's in the coma, as you see. But she's still alive. I know, but I can't deceive you. The odds are, well, the infection has spread from her spine to other of her bones. It's in her bloodstream now. Isn't much we can do. Oh, I know, I know. I've stood over a crib watching to see if she's still breathing. Only last week she was in my arms. She was smiling. She's only two months old, but I tell you she was smiling at me. Now she, she isn't smiling, is she? Try to understand what I'm going to say. The drug we've used on your baby has barely been tested. We still don't know what it'll do. There's a chance that it might do the wrong thing. You have to know that. I've given you my permission, Dr. Graham. Do anything, anything you want to. Don't be ashamed. If you want to cry, let go. Cry, it'll help you. I can't. I mustn't cry. Dr. Graham, I'm so frightened. I'll give God after three days my baby's crying again. She's alive. It's like Lazarus, raised from the dead. Listen to her. I never thought I'd hear her cry again. You know what that cry is? It's a hungry cry. Hungry? Yes. She's hungry, Dr. Graham. Yes. If you don't mind, Dr. Graham, I think I'm going to cry. Penicillin. You had your miracle now, didn't you, Dr. Florian? The miracle to turn those fateful odds to your favor, not mine. A crystal, a powder, a liquid distilled from the brew of a common fungus. Secretion of mold, heavy with the connotation of life. Penicillin. Amber magic as we stand by the bed sides now. Men ravaged by bread disease, men hashing with pallor. Men nearly cold to the touch, rise as if from a shroud and shake your hand, not mine. And look at the sky again and laugh. And yet for you, there is no laughter. To have something in your hand, to have the answer, and then not to have it. To have success and not to have it. A greater success than all our wildest dreams. And still the struggle goes on. They still can't produce it. It's unstable. Britain's entire yield is so small, it's microscopic. Last week, a man who should have been dead lived because we gave him penicillin. He was nearly normal. And then our entire supply ran out. And he died. He shouldn't have died, but he died. Yes. I'm sorry. If that has done curt, it's worse. Oh, it's hope there for millions of British and allied soldiers. But there is still hope, Dr. Florey. Hope in America, where you can speed the miracle of penicillin. In America, you had your miracle now. Dr. Florey, the miracle of production. And for the first time in all those weary months, you could look at me and smile. Smile as we watched the haggard, hopeful men in a thousand laboratories across America, fighting by your side to produce that yellow magic, the magic which has the power to lighten and delay my endless inexorable toil. And you could smile at the words of a man who spoke of an ancient curse. We have established that penicillin will cure gonorrhea in less than 15 hours and syphilis in eight days. This may mean the eventual extinction of the social diseases from the face of the globe. But at this time, our first concern is for the men at war, casualties of battle. Our places with them, Dr. In this year of 1944, our places at the dead side of the Australian boy, wounded in the South Pacific, the boy from Arkansas, hit by shrapnel at Casino, our places where we stand watch now, beside a boy who fell on the Anziel beachhead, a soldier swollen with fever, his thigh bone angry with infection. For three days now, a number of fluid has been dripping into his veins. And now he sleeps quietly, untroubled. He sleeps like this for a day and a night. Now he stirs and his eyes open with a returning relief. They didn't amputate. Did they nurse? They didn't take my leg. No, Corporal, they didn't. Just reach down and feel it, still there. I was scared they would. How do you feel? Fine, I think. You know something. What? I'm hungry. Oh, that's wonderful. I want a big juicy steak, so fresh. You practically come out of a coma and French fries are apart for... Two days ago, your temperature was 106 and a half. Some string beans. Yesterday, your pulse was 128. Nice and green. Corporal, you've had septicemia. Maybe some ice cream for dessert. Big glass of milk. Corporal, you're still delirious. Now, if you're good, you can have some tea and toast. I want a steak. Tea and toast. You think I got shot up for tea and toast? Doctor's order. No steak. You're lucky to be alive. I'll be a good boy and do what the doctor said. Well, he didn't cut off my leg, so okay. For now, I should have croaked for a night. You can thank the stuff in this bottle for that. Yeah? What is it? Penicillin. Saved your life on my leg. That's important, my leg. It's pretty wonderful. You bet. A lot of guys like me won't be using crutches, huh? A lot of guys like you. That's good to know. Awful good. It's pretty funny, isn't it? Out of the war, and kids, who would have died are going to live. I wonder who ever thought of that. Men and women who've made possible this modern miracle of penicillin. To those who've gone before, to Pasteur, to Fleming, and to those tireless workers who still carry on, my thanks a small reward. But you will be remembered in the years to come, and your reward will be the thanks and gratitude of all mankind. Yes, doctor. In the years to come, men will remember how you ease their hurt and earn their gratitude. And I will remember, for you have eased my sorry labors from henceforth, even unto the last generation. And you have earned my gratitude. Gratitude of death. Thank you, Thomas Mitchell and George Kalores. Mr. Mitchell will return to the microphone in a few moments. Meanwhile, here is Gain Whitman speaking for DuPont with this week's story of chemistry. The story of penicillin would be incomplete without a word of appreciation to the Rockefeller Foundation, which so graciously and generously gave support to the pioneers of this wonderful new agent of healing. It was Dr. Simon Flexner of the Rockefeller Institute, who 15 years ago made the prediction that the next great advance in medicine would be in the field of chemotherapy. Penicillin, as the second great discovery in this field, coming so closely on the heels of sulfur drugs, proves how accurate he was. In 1936, and again in 1939, the Dr. Flory of whose pioneer work you heard on this evening's cavalcade program, applied to the Rockefeller Foundation for a grant of funds in order that he might continue with his research on penicillin. We might not have this new drug if it were not for the keen perception of the men of the Rockefeller Fund, who believe the proper place to extend their financial help is on the frontiers of science, rather than in the subtle places behind the frontiers. Medical science acknowledges frontiers, but not geographic boundaries. The same thing is true of all science, including chemistry. American industry must give credit to the chemical scientists of other countries, for Abuna S. Rubber, processes for making ammonia, tungsten carbide, explosive rivets, rayon, cellophane, and a number of other discoveries, which though they were further developed here, originally came to America from abroad. Because men of science realize that people of all nations benefit when scientific information is freely exchanged, we have these discoveries, which are of so much value to us in wartime, and which will continue to be of great usefulness in peacetime. Among these are many of DuPont's better things for better living through chemistry. And now here is Thomas Mitchell. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It was a pleasure to appear on tonight's cavalcade with George Caloris and the others in cavalcade's fine cast, especially interesting because of the great attention we're paying to the development of penicillin these days. Incidentally, I hear that cavalcade has a very interesting play lined up for next week with one of your favorite actors, one of my favorite actors too, Frederick March. Freddie is going to do a radio adaptation of some of the highlights from his newest picture, The Adventures of Mark Twain. He was all right too. It's a wonderful movie and make a fine radio entertainment. It's the kind of tonic, I guess, we need these days. So I'll be listening next week with the rest of you. Bye. Cavalcade is pleased for a mindless audience that Thomas Mitchell may soon be seen in the 20th century box production, Wilson. Tonight's cavalcade music was composed and conducted by Robert Ambruster. This is James Bannon sending best wishes from cavalcade sponsor, the DuPont's company of Wilmington, Delaware. And inviting you to join us again next Monday evening when Frederick March will be starred in The Adventures of Mark Twain, a grand story about America's beloved writer and humor. The cavalcade of America sponsored by DuPont came to you from Hollywood.