The collection consists of correspondence and other documents assembled by Harold Thomas Swan, MD, FRCP, FRCPath, Honorary Lecturer in Medical History, University of Sheffield, and formerly Consultant in Haematology, United Sheffield Hospitals, and relates principally to the history of two medical scientists: Sir Alexander Fleming, who published his discovery of penicillin in 1929 but who has been subsequently criticised for an apparent failure to pursue its clinical potential, criticism repeated in a BBC Horizon programme in 1989; and Dr Cecil George Paine, a junior Clinical Pathologist at the Royal Infirmary, Sheffield in 1929-30, for whose clinical work in the successful treatment of infections by penicillin there exists the earliest known documentation of such treatment. The material is mainly in the form of correspondence between Dr Swan and individuals who worked with or knew Fleming and / or Paine.
Many of the documents in the Fleming Material (Section 185/3 in the list) are copies, the originals of which are held in the British Library Department of Manuscripts.
Further information on specific areas of the documentation is given in the finding aid.
From the guide to the Harold Thomas Swan Papers, 1945-1996, mainly 1986-1996, (University of Sheffield Library)
