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Doherty, Ember
Roberta Wolfson
Writing 2
3/14/16
Approaching a Cure:
A Case Study of Different Disciplines Methods of Looking at Penicillin
A discipline describes an exclusive community of knowledge that includes some and
excludes others. Although these disciplines often include very distinct information, there are
some topics that span across disciplines. One such topic is the discovery and production of
penicillin, which can be examined both from a biochemical viewpoint and from a historical one.
To do this I used Robert Buds Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy which looks at how penicillin
has had an impact on society historically, and Cooper and Koppels The Chemistry of Penicillin
Sulfoxide found in Chemistry and Biology of -Lactam Antibiotics Volume 1 edited by Morin
and Gorman which describes the biochemical processes that occur within penicillin. Although
both sources give extensive information on the drug, Buds book not only looks at penicillin
itself, but also its effect on society worldwide making it more inclusive and well-rounded than
Cooper and Koppels work which looks solely at what penicillin is versus how it affects human
life.
To start, the main idea of Cooper and Koppels work is the objective chemical
achievements of penicillin regardless of the ethics and morality behind those achievements.
According to Cooper and Koppel, penicillin has been a wonderful achievement because it has
helped us to gain new knowledge about biochemistry that we did not have previously. Cooper
and Koppel do not look at the effect that penicillin has had on humanity or on society, but rather
they only look at the objective, impersonal nature of the information gained. This comes from the
fact that biochemistry is a scientific discipline. It is not the job of a biochemist to examine the

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effect something has on society or on people, unless they are looking at the purely physical and
chemical effect on the human body. Biochemistry is a field based around experimentation and
conclusive evidence that can be proven again and again by various people of that discipline.
Although this objective nature of the discipline can add to its credibility as the information
gathered cannot be reasonably disputed, it tends to bottleneck the findings and prevents
biochemists from looking at the whole picture. Humans and human society is more than a mass
of molecules and thus it takes more than an understanding of those molecules to fully understand
the subject at hand.
In contrast, Buds book both explains the objective history of penicillin and speculates on
how that history has shaped people and society in both positive and negative ways, thus making
Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy a more inclusive examination of the topic. The thesis of Buds
work is Penicillin has proved a triumph both for its discoverers and for millions of beneficiaries.
At the same time, with its potentially disastrous outcome, its in electable progression to that end,
and our inevitable submission to the essential constraints of the world, the story of penicillin can
also be read as a tragic drama (3). This thesis reads almost like the beginning of a fictional
novel. Bud, like Cooper and Koppel, accepts that there is a very positive side to penicillin. He
does not deny the scientific achievement of it. However, Bud goes on to explain that penicillin
might not be all good. He argues that there are many downsides to the mass production of
penicillin in addition to its upsides. Because Bud is looking at this topic from the historical
discipline rather than a purely scientific discipline such as biochemistry, he examines it keeping
in mind the human element. As I mentioned before, people are not just a sum of their molecules.
Disciplines such as history look past the objectivity of chemical and biological makeups to see
the more subjective and personal sides of peoples lives. Historians like Bud look not just at what

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knowledge is gained, but also at how that knowledge affects people, for better or worse. This
different area of study also explains why Buds work reads more like a novel than a research text.
Bud is writing a story about human society. It follows a linear timeline and tries to understand
and explain the events that happened in order to reach the ending that occurred i.e. present day
as we know it. By telling this story, Bud considers events from many angles and perspectives. It
is clear looking at nothing more than his thesis, that Buds work provides a much fuller look at
the topic than Cooper and Koppels as Bud considers all sides of the die rather than just one of
them.
We can continue our examination of these texts by looking at the differences in the
evidence each book uses. Cooper and Koppel limit their sources to two distinct types of
evidence. The first is information from the works of various scientists. This information is never
quoted and stated simply as facts about discoveries made. For example, An alternative method
of deoxygenation of penicillin sulfoxides utilized phosphorus pentasulfide-pyridine (Micetich,
1976b) (Cooper and Koppel 7). There are never any actual quotes or any more in depth
information about the studies from which this knowledge is derived. This comes from the fact
that Cooper and Koppel are comprising information from many very in depth scientific studies.
Scientific reports often include very detailed information regarding procedure and data. Although
this information is very helpful to scientists attempting to recreate the experiments, it is
unnecessary in a work like Cooper and Koppels text which serves as a summary of the results of
such experiments. The audience reading Cooper and Koppels text is not looking for in depth
information about the experiments, but rather a condensed listing of the results. Cooper and
Koppel use paraphrasing rather than any direct quotes because the style of writing used in
experimental reports is hard for the average person to understand. It takes a lot of background

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knowledge of the subject and the experiment to understand and Cooper and Koppel are not
assuming their readers have that background. The other kind of evidence used by Cooper and
Koppel is scientific diagrams. Cooper and Koppel fill their book with molecular diagrams
showing the various chemical makeups of different penicillin sulfoxide molecules. These
molecular diagrams provide visual evidence that demonstrates to the reader how the ideas
mentioned in the text are applied to the physical world. These diagrams again serve as a way to
simplify the complex data collected by scientists in various experiments. Because these forms of
evidence rely on simplifying information, they end up excluding a lot. Books written from the
biochemical perspective are designed to act as a middle-ground to provide the complex
information of the discipline to a wider audience. Biochemistry is a very exclusive discipline that
requires tons of specific knowledge to fully understand, so books written in this discipline often
have to exclude information in order for people without background knowledge to understand
them. Because of this books written from the perspective of biochemistry cannot be fully
inclusive and lack a lot of important information.
Bud, on the other hand, uses a variety of evidence to support his argument. Buds
evidence includes statistical evidence, quotes from experts, quotes from primary sources, and
even photographic evidence. Buds book tells a narrative story and he uses evidence from many
different places to add credibility to this story. Bud is giving his readers a vision of penicillins
effects throughout the years and his evidence helps his readers to see that vision and understand
his argument. One type of evidence that Bud gives that I find particularly strong is his use of
primary sources. A primary source is something, either a piece of writing like a newspaper article
or the testimony of a living person, that existed during the time a historian is writing about. An
example of this can be found on page 66 of Buds book, Pay your debt to penicillin. Write a

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cheque to St. Marys now. This quote comes from a flyer advertising St. Marys Hospital in the
1940s. The quote demonstrates Buds point, in this case that penicillin was used as propaganda
to raise money for hospitals, while also painting a picture for the reader about what life was like
at that time. The difference in the wording of the quote versus how we talk nowadays adds
credibility to Buds argument as it takes the reader back in time and helps the reader understand
how life was different. This evidence contributes to the story-like feel of Buds work by taking
the reader back in time to the events Bud is writing about while also adding to the credibility of
the work by providing an example of how life was like during that time. Bud also utilizes
evidence such as anecdotes. On pages 64-66 Bud recounts the story of Alexander Fleming who
was credited with the discovery of penicillin in 1944. Flemings story comes from his
autobiography and is a personal account of what happened to him. This form of evidence is very
good at fitting with the story style because Fleming is telling a story about his life. Although Bud
paraphrases Flemings words, he does not lose the storytelling aspect of recounting the memory.
This form of evidence adds credibility because the reader can relate to Fleming as a real person.
By putting a name to the story and recounting it as someones memory, Bud allows the reader to
empathize with the humanity of the character, Fleming. This makes the reader more likely to
believe the information because it seems real and human. Having a variety of evidence is very
important in the discipline of history. With biochemistry, although the books can be lacking in
specifics, people accept that the information has been collected by credible sources. Because
biochemistry relies only on objective data, people do not question the correctness of that data as
much as they question subjective information collected by historians. With a historical work such
as Buds, it is important to draw on knowledge from a variety of sources. This serves two
purposes for historians. Firstly, if multiple sources show the same data, it adds credibility to that

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data. Secondly, history examines the human side of the information. Data collected by historians
is subjective because it looks at the subjective nature of people and society. It is important to
understand concepts fully by looking at a variety of sources so that the historian may be able to
find consistencies in how various people felt and thought about a topic. Because of the subjective
nature of historical information, it requires many different types of information not only to
provide credibility, but to find consistencies as well. By using multiple types of evidence and
giving such vivid descriptions of the past, Bud is able to explore ideas more in depth than Cooper
and Koppel. Bud helps readers understand different ways of looking at events whereas Cooper
and Koppel only approach the topic from a single angle.
Representing their respective fields of biochemistry and history, both Cooper and
Koppels work and Buds provide valuable information about penicillin. Cooper and Koppel
provide readers with the biochemical knowledge required to understand how penicillin works at
a molecular level. Bud gives readers a story about how penicillin has shaped society since it was
discovered and labeled as a miracle drug. Although both texts are very informative, Buds work,
as well as the historical discipline as a whole, looks at the issue of penicillin from multiple angles
making it a more inclusive, fuller resource.

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Works Cited
Cooper, Robin, and Koppel, Gary. The Chemistry of Penicillin Sulfoxide. Chemistry
and Biology of -Lactam Antibiotics. Ed. Morin, Robert, and Gormin, Marvin. Vol. 1.
New York: Academic Press, Inc, 1982. Print.
Bud, Robert. Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2007. Print.