Penicillin.
It is an antibiotic that protects the human body by killing bacteria or blocking their reproduction.
While the principle might seem simple enough for high school students in later generations to understand, as the first true antibiotic in human history, penicillin brought earth-shattering, revolutionary progress to modern medicine, allowing humanity to grasp a truly effective systemic weapon in the long war against bacterial infectious diseases for the first time.
Diseases like sepsis, pneumonia, puerperal fever, and syphilis, which once reaped lives like grass on battlefields and in ordinary hospital wards, were effectively suppressed for the first time, and the curve of human average life expectancy quietly rose as a result.
It is not a panacea that cures all ills, but just by imagining the helplessness doctors faced before the advent of penicillin when confronted with many bacterial infections, one can understand its epoch-making significance.
It can be said that many branches of the edifice of modern medicine were only able to flourish after possessing the cornerstone that is antibiotics.
To tell the truth, when Karl first transmigrated here, he did not immediately think of penicillin.
He was not the type of person who would only spend his days drawing empty blueprints in his mind.
While he knew the general direction for the specific extraction and application technologies, the details were a blank slate that required professionals to conquer, and there was simply too much he had to learn.
He had to study the complex history and family lineages of Europe, master the basics of philosophy, religion, and law, and be proficient in multiple languages such as German, Hungarian, French, and English.
As a member of the imperial family, he also could not skip physical training like horsemanship and fencing, or etiquette training.
The opportunity that truly made him determined to invest huge sums of money to start penicillin research largely stemmed from his father, Archduke Otto Franz, who lived a debauched life.
Every time his father stepped into the house, the mix of alcohol and various perfumes on his body always exuded a nauseating scent.
Karl was a person who was accustomed to elevating specific problems to grand goals.
Anyway, he was an orphan in his past life, and saving his father’s life and health could be considered both an act of filial piety and a realistic political necessity.
A living, or at least not so decadent, father was an important political shield and resource for him at this stage.
Oh my, thinking of this, how many sons as filial as him could there be in the world?
In any case, before considering his father, Karl first sorted out his own small goals:
Before the outbreak of the World War, accumulate as much political influence as possible; at the same time, earn massive amounts of capital, and based on that, promote military reform and technological progress, preparing an army better adapted to the new era.
This was his plan.
However, he was simply too young, and the political influence he could directly exert was severely restricted by court rules and seniority.
Money was relatively easier to handle; as long as the ideas were good enough, the timing of the era was right, and one utilized information gaps and status advantages, it could always be earned.
But to substantially intervene in the empire’s rigid political and military systems was truly as difficult as ascending to heaven.
The Old Emperor was the biggest obstacle, Crown Prince Ferdinand, who had a tense relationship with the Emperor, was a variable, and the stubborn Hungarian Parliament that refused to yield an inch was an even thornier problem.
It could be said that there were countless people standing in his way.
Therefore, as long as his father did not die too early (historically, Archduke Otto died in 1906), he could at least borrow some influence.
After all, as the son of Emperor Franz Joseph, who had sat on the throne for decades, and having spent so many years in that circle, his father’s voice and network of interpersonal relationships were much stronger than his own as a young child.
Historically, his father, following the consistent style of the Habsburg Family, indulged in debauchery, entangled with countless women, and finally died of tertiary syphilis due to severe complications.
It was truly an ending that was not the least bit surprising.
Since that was the case, how was syphilis treated in this era?
The answer was: mercury therapy.
A highly toxic heavy metal used to treat an equally terrifying bacterial infectious disease.
But the medical community at the time believed in “fighting poison with poison,” and mercury preparations (such as mercury ointments and injections) could indeed kill some Treponema pallidum, bringing temporary symptom relief.
The problem was that while the bacteria might be killed off in part, the human body also suffered severe devastation from mercury poisoning—hair loss, tooth loss, nerve damage, kidney failure…
Therefore, this therapy had always been feared and criticized.
Karl certainly couldn’t drag his father to undergo a “mercury bath” or inject mercury agents; that wouldn’t be much different from murder.
Thus, what naturally came to his mind was penicillin.
penicillin had an extremely excellent curative effect on syphilis (especially in the early stages), and its side effects were far smaller than mercury agents.
Wasn’t this the most ideal tool to save his father while simultaneously acquiring huge prestige and capital?
It could both save his father’s life, thereby raising his own weight in the royal family and political circles, and serve as a revolutionary antibiotic for treating many diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea, pneumonia, and streptococcal infections; it was destined to become an inexhaustible gold mine.
Therefore, after he was able to barely mobilize a considerable amount of funds through films and early investments, he immediately secretly established this penicillin research institute.
The scale was not large at the beginning, but the investment was not stingy at all, using the best laboratory conditions of the time and the highest salaries to recruit outstanding talents in related fields.
What Karl could provide was only the most critical directional information: penicillin comes from Penicillium.
He provided the names of several strains that might produce penicillin (such as Penicillium notatum), as well as conceptual directions that might be needed, such as low-temperature extraction and freeze-drying.
He thought this was enough, naively thinking that the researchers would naturally extract it themselves and make it into a drug.
The institute did indeed have discoveries very quickly at the beginning.
They successfully cultivated the strain from mold spots and confirmed that its extract had an inhibitory effect on certain bacteria.
But the problem was that although the discovery was fast, the initially extracted penicillin substance was ridiculously fragile, its activity was extremely low, and it would rapidly lose effectiveness almost as soon as it left the culture medium and came into contact with air, light, or temperature changes.
It had extremely harsh requirements for temperature and environment, and in this era, achieving completely sterile, constant-temperature, and constant-humidity industrial production and control was an almost impossible task.
If it were to be truly used for clinical treatment, it would have to go through a series of complex steps such as purification, concentration, sterile packaging, cold storage, and safe transportation.
Such delicate things were simply useless under existing technical conditions.
It lost its activity before it could even be used on a patient; if one wanted to mass-produce it, it would fail as soon as it was transferred from the culture tank.
What was the point of this?
It was truly maddening.
They clearly thought they had found a gold mine, only to discover that the initially extracted penicillin was too sensitive and fragile.
The researchers dejectedly argued that they must perform artificial selection or even modification of the original strain to cultivate a new strain; or try adding other stabilizers during the extraction process.
Dr.
Hantsch even suggested that they should expand the search scope and study different Penicillium strains cultivated in other environments, perhaps there would be unexpected gains.
Karl at first even darkly suspected whether these damn researchers were playing tricks just to get more funding.
After all, top microbiologists, chemists, and the precision instruments they used were all ridiculously expensive.
Bills were sent to Augarten Palace one after another, and as Karl watched his small treasury shrink rapidly, his legs almost went weak; it would be strange if he didn’t think that way.
The maintenance and research and development costs of this institute were shockingly high, yet the deadline for success was completely out of sight.
Even so, relying on his absolute confidence in the historical status of penicillin, Karl gritted his teeth and continued to allocate funds from subsequent film revenues to support it, until that Western film that sold well in the United States relieved his urgent need and brought in abundant cash flow. Get faster updates on novelping(.)com.
Long live movies!
The entertainment industry is truly a cash cow.
If it weren’t for movies, Karl really wouldn’t know how this money-guzzling institute could be maintained.
However, compared to the real money he continued to pour into it, the institute’s achievements were still pitifully meager.
What was finally obtained was only a tiny amount of crude extract, which was difficult to preserve and low in purity.
Even in preliminary animal tests and clinical trials on individual patients with late-stage syphilis, it was declared ineffective due to insufficient dosage or loss of activity.
But today, judging from the expression and tone of Hantsch and Landsteiner, the situation seemed to have truly taken a turn for the better.
“Your Highness, please believe in our data this time.” Dr.
Hantsch’s tone became firm,
“With the assistance of Dr.
Landsteiner, we have isolated a brand-new Penicillium strain from a batch of spoiled cantaloupes, temporarily named ‘Cantaloupe Strain’.
Preliminary tests show that under optimized culture medium and specific fermentation conditions, its penicillin yield is more than two hundred times that of the strains we used in the past!
We are currently making every effort to adjust the best nutritional formula and fermentation device parameters for it, building the most suitable growth environment for its high-yield stability.”
This director, who was always cautious and even a bit timid, was the most confident Karl had ever seen at this moment.
Was there really such an astonishing breakthrough?
A two-hundred-fold increase in yield?
Karl’s heartbeat accelerated slightly.
Since they could report so confidently even though the industrial production process had not yet been completely finalized, it seemed there really was a substantial breakthrough.
“So, Director Hantsch, you came today to report that you have finally found the key to success, determined the correct strain and direction, right?”
“This…
Your Highness, yes, the direction is already incomparably clear, and the potential of the strain has been initially confirmed.”
Hantsch’s tone was still affirmative, but immediately after, the hopeful momentum from just a moment ago visibly receded, and he began to stutter.
“But?” Karl anticipated what was coming next.
“But, to transform this high-yield potential in the laboratory into a stable, controllable, and mass-producible process…
to obtain finished products that can truly be used for clinical treatment…
still requires more in-depth research, more complex equipment, and…
more time and funding support.”
Hantsch began to speak at length, and finally revealed the ultimate purpose of his visit.
Money.