The mass manufacture of penicillin during World War II stimulated urgent interest in other medicinally important soil microorganisms. Selman Waksman, chair of microbiology at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (Rutgers University) in the 1940s, had investigated the mycelial bacteria Actinomycetes since World War I, and had screened for several species that produced metabolites that inhibited other microbes.
Seen here in Waksman's notes are his April 1943 experiments with nutrient formulas for growing streptomycin-producing cultures. By fall 1943, Waksman had his lab group concentrating on the Actinomycetes when William Feldman and Corwin Hinshaw, visiting from the Mayo Clinic, presented a clinical trial opportunity for an anti-tuberculosis drug. Waksman assigned preparation for that task to his graduate students, chiefly Albert Schatz. Schatz soon isolated streptomycin, an aminoglycoside that inhibits protein synthesis, and tested it on the pathogen.1 Feldman and Hinshaw carried out animal testing and then treated "Patricia T." between November ...
