Grantville Gazette, Volume X Read online

  Vlad waved a piece of paper. "Money. Money like yours, in fact." He passed it to Brandy, who looked at it and passed it on to Donna. "Colorful."

  It was. About four by eight inches, printed in red. "Who's this?"

  "The czar Mikhail." Vlad pointed at the images. "A cross, a proper cross, on the other end."

  Donna flipped the paper over. "And that would be the palace, I suppose? Or a government building of some sort?"

  "The Kremlin." Vlad took the bill back.

  "And what does the writing say?" Donna looked at him curiously.

  "This bill is legal tender for all debts, by order of the czar, with the support of the Duma and the Zminski Sobor. One ruble."

  "Bernie or you, Vlad? I mean, this isn't the sort of thing that Bernie would come up with." Brandy had known Bernie Zeppi for years. This wasn't his sort of thing.

  "Me, mostly. I started sending information about your banking system well before Bernie left."

  * * *

  Vladimir believed in going to the best source he could find. He discussed the matter of book copying with the staff of the research center. Then sent the patriarch information on the book-copying system they had instituted. Parts of it. like scanning pages into computers could not be replicated in Muscovy. Other parts could, like the waxed silk sheets for the new duplicating machines.

  Having, he hoped, explained to the patriarch that he could not just buy the National Library and ship it off to the Kremlin, he set to work on the next impossible demand. He made an appointment with Wilkie Anderson, the Tech Center teacher of auto mechanics. The man had the strangest desk he had ever seen. It was red and appeared to be the front end of a truck. Wilkie noticed him staring and pressed a button. The blaring noise rocked Vladimir back on his feet.

  Wilkie grinned. "That always got the students attention. Yes, it is the front end of a S10 pickup truck. And I've hooked the horn up to the electricity. I don't honk it that much, but I still enjoy seeing people jump. Now, what can I do for you, Mister . . . ah . . . Yaroslav?"

  "Yaroslavich," Vlad said. "A peculiarity of Russian nomenclature. But, no matter. I come because I have a question. Is it possible to 'pull the engine' of a 'car' and have it transported to another place?"

  Wilkie nodded. "You can pull any engine. But some of them won't do you much good. What kind of engine is it?"

  "I'm told it is a 1972 Dodge Charger." Vladimir waved the bill of sale Bernie had sent. "I don't really know what that means, but that's the car. Bernie Zeppi wants me to pull the engine and transmission and send it to him in Muscovy. I'm here to find out if that is possible."

  "Not a bad choice." Wilkie leaned back in his chair and motioned Vladimir to another. "It's a good bit less complicated than some. No computers in it, at any rate. And I remember that car. Bernie bought it for a couple of hundred dollars back when he took my classes. We restored it together, out in the shop. Me, Bernie, all the class. Leon McCarthy, from the body shop classes, even got involved and fixed a couple of dents. But why pull the engine? Why don't you just put it in neutral and pull it with horses? How far does it have to travel and what are the roads like?"

  "It has to go to Moscow and will make a good part of the trip by way of the Baltic sea." Vladimir shrugged. "The roads are fairly bad. Horrible, by up-timer standards. On the other hand, we can use more than two horses if we have to."

  "Russia used to have oil wells up-time." Wilkie leaned forward. "Are you folks planning on getting into the oil business or do you figure on buying gas from the Wietze oil fields? I gotta tell you, they aren't getting much high octane yet."

  "I have no idea," Vladimir admitted. "For all I know they want to use the engine as a planter for up-timer roses. I am also told to send those."

  "Well," Wilkie shrugged away the possibility of Russian oil fields, "if you can get it onto and off of the boat, it really might be easier just to tow the darn thing. Sure, it weighs more than a wagon. But it's also got shocks and ball bearings on the wheels. Most of the time it'll be easier to pull than a wagon, even with the engine in it."

  * * *

  Brandy came upon Vladimir in the Research Center. He was engrossed in yet another volume of the encyclopedia. "What's up?"

  "Your Mr. Wilkie says that Russia in the up-time had oil fields. If they were there in the up-time, they will be here now. I wish to locate them. And I shall have to arrange for some people to come here for training at the oil field. In fact, I should probably have a number of people come here."

  Brandy sat down at the table across from Vlad and nodded. "Probably not a bad idea. Who will you have come?"

  Vlad sighed a bit. "I'm quite sure that the Embassy Bureau already has people on the way. But this is too much for just a few people to absorb. I'm going to write Natasha and have her pick the best of the people from our lands. As well, I'm sure she knows some students who would be interested." Vlad looked Brandy in the eyes and said in a serious tone, "Muscovy politics are not pretty, Brandy. Not pretty at all. It hasn't been that long since Czar Ivan and the time of troubles. It will take a lot of work, but I believe most strongly that Russia must take advantage of the knowledge in Grantville. Most strongly. That is why, although it will be atrociously expensive, I will send Bernie his car. I will send books. Eventually, I hope to send teachers."

  "You're not trying to be Peter the Great, are you?" Brandy asked. "I just don't see you going around cutting off beards and all that silly stuff."

  "Not silly, my dear. Not silly at all." Vlad made a vague gesture and frowned. "It was a symbol. And symbols can be very powerful. The beards might have been the wrong symbol at the wrong time, perhaps. But something had to be done. Or rather, would have had to be done, had it not been for the Ring of Fire." Vladimir sighed.

  "The history of my country isn't a happy one, not according to the very few books here in Grantville. These books, they barely mention the time of troubles after the death of Ivan the Terrible, the three false Dimitri's that left Muscovy bleeding and broken. Poland invaded—intervened they say—and took Patriarch Filaret prisoner. The Poles held him prisoner for years, Branya. Years. Then, afterwards, he was forced to take a vow of chastity by Boris Godunov. The purpose of the vow was to disqualify him from the throne."

  Vlad closed the book with a snap and stared into the distance. "It hardened him, Brandy. Which may well be to the good. I don't know whether it was being forced to take holy orders or the imprisonment. Whatever it was that caused it, he was different when he came back. There is a cold-blooded practicality that wasn't there before. He manipulates everyone. The czar, Mikhail Fedorovich, is not in control. His father is."

  "Do you know him?" Brandy settled in for a long talk. "The czar, I mean." She couldn't help but be interested. Vladimir attracted her in a way that few people did. She wanted to understand him and his country.

  "Yes." Vlad gazed into an unseen distance. "My family is very wealthy, on the whole. And the treasury was bare when Mikhail came to the throne. My sister and I are the last of our particular branch, which concentrated the wealth even more. So we were invited to court quite a bit. Not as much as some, but fairly often. Our father traveled for the Embassy Bureau for many years; it gave us a different outlook. Natasha and I were educated more than some." Vlad's face grew more animated. "Natasha does know the czarina quite well, and I have sent her letters and books. Perhaps the czarina, with Natasha's help, can become more of an influence."

  "You said once that the czar supports Gustavus Adolphus, didn't you? Or is that his father's doing?"

  "Some of both I think." Vlad leaned forward. "Money. Always a problem, the money. The Poles cleaned out the Muscovy treasury. The time of troubles left roving bands of thieves that travel through Russia, some of them even now, after nearly twenty years of Mikhail's rule. Mikhail is loved by the people but he is not very strong. He is governed by the boyars and Duma men. I respect your system of government, Brandy. I really do. But how much of it can be adapted to Muscovy . . . that is harder t
o say. I don't know how much we can do. We have Natasha. We have your Berna, even. I will work for change, with all my heart."

  "I'll help." Brandy stood up. "As much as I can."

  NON-FICTION

  Crude Penicillin: Potential and Limitations

  By Kim Mackey

  "That which we know frequently impedes us in acquiring new knowledge." Claude Bernard (1813-1878), French physiologist.

  Background and Early History of Penicillin

  The Age of Disinfection began with the work of Pasteur and Lister in the 1860s and 1870s. While this initial work focused on external disinfection, doctors and scientists were soon looking for ways to use substances for "internal disinfection," that is, to rid the human body of disease-causing organisms. Unfortunately, these initial efforts were limited. "Their attack," Iago Goldston wrote, "was too direct, too primitive for the wily ways of nature. They thought to catch sunbeams in a butterfly net." [1, 81].

  "At the Congress of Internal Medicine held in Wiesbaden in 1883, the assembled body of scientists solemnly recorded it as their sober judgment that "inner disinfection is an impossibility." [1, 80]. Influenced by the work of Von Behring and others, scientists turned to anti-toxin therapies to cure human ills rather than chemotherapy. This attitude changed somewhat in the early twentieth century with the work of Paul Ehrlich and the discovery of salvarsan, but between 1915 and 1935 there was little progress and scientists began to doubt that the theories of Ehrlich were correct. It was in this context that Alexander Fleming, a member of the staff of the Inoculation Department at Saint Mary's Hospital in London, and recently appointed Professor of Bacteriology at the University of London, discovered penicillin in September, 1928. Unfortunately, Fleming limited his observations on penicillin's bacteria-killing power to "a few sentences or very short paragraphs in medical journals, most of them with very limited circulation." [2, 1]. Thus proof of the remarkable antibiotic power of penicillin would have to wait for the work of Florey and his colleagues twelve years later, well after the introduction of sulfanilamide's.

  As with any major discovery, the history of penicillin is filled with facts, pseudo-facts, omissions and myths. For example, because of the way in which penicillin attacks bacteria ("it could only act on them during the very short phase in their life history when they were actually dividing" [2, 3]), it is highly unlikely that the mold contaminated the plate after the bacterial colony had been established. This is important, because "if the phenomenon had been produced in the manner Fleming thought it had, it would be a very common occurrence in bacteriological laboratories all over the world, and Fleming could claim credit only for observing something unusual and acting upon it. In doing so he did himself an injustice, because the stringent requirements in terms of time when the mold reached the plate and the temperature to which it was subsequently subjected render its accidental production almost impossible in countries with tropical or continental climates, and very unusual in those with temperate climates. Fleming was a great deal more fortunate than he ever realized." [2, 3-4].

  Another myth that can be dispelled is the source of the mold. In 1945 when a film about penicillin was being produced, Fleming told the producer, for whatever reason, that the mold must have drifted in off the street. This was highly unlikely, however, since the windows were seldom open because they were too difficult to reach. In fact, the plates were most likely contaminated by mold from the mycology laboratory run by Dr. C. J. La Touche on the floor below Fleming's lab, since, as noted in Flemings original paper, one of La Touche's molds, "had exactly the same cultural characteristics as the mold on the original plate, and, although he did not say so, ability to produce the same amount of penicillin." [2,4]

  The dispelling of this myth is important for the 1632 universe. Why? Because knowing that molds and other substances in the soil have antibiotic properties and can be isolated and cultured is a huge percentage of the battle. Once this fact was appreciated up-time, many substances were quickly isolated that were useful in fighting a wide variety of bacterial infections.

  It will be very important for down-time scientists and physicians to appreciate the potential and limitations of antibiotics. While penicillin can treat a wide variety of bacterial infections, there are also a wide variety that it cannot, especially in the crude form. Fortunately, production of crude penicillin, once you have an appropriate mold strain, is fairly simple.

  Alexander Fleming did not start serious experimentation with the penicillium mold until December 1928, and when he did much of the work was done by a research assistant, Dr. Stuart Craddock, who had just qualified in medicine in July 1928. "It was soon found that penicillin could be produced by growing the mold at room temperature in the laboratory's routine broth, which was made in small batches from a tryptic digest of bullock's heart muscle. A pellicle formed on the surface, the fluid below became bright yellow and was usually free of mold particles. Although they could be removed by filtration without loss of penicillin, this was usually omitted." [2, 6]

  The procedure for estimating penicillin content "consisted in making serial dilutions in fresh broth, to each of which were added a few drops of a staphylococcal suspension. Following incubation, the highest dilution in which no growth of organisms had occurred was recorded as the titre. It was soon found that after growth at room temperature for five to seven days the titre was generally 1/100 to 1/300 and very occasionally 1/600. Thereafter, it began to fall so that all but a trace of penicillin had gone after fourteen days." [2, 6]

  In January 1929 attempts were made to concentrate the penicillin and it was fairly quickly discovered that penicillin was readily soluble in both ether and alcohol, but not significantly so in acetone. It is important to note that penicillin's instability was not a major problem for the experimenters. What drew Fleming and his assistants away from testing penicillin for antibiotic purposes were experiments with rabbits which seemed to indicate a quick elimination of penicillin once introduced into the body. Unfortunately, Fleming drew the wrong conclusion from the experiments and felt that the reason was the absorption of the penicillin by tissues and serum, rather than elimination through the urine.

  The earliest successful uses of crude penicillin to cure bacterial infections seem to have been the attempts in the early 1930s by Dr. C. G. Paine in Sheffield [3]. Paine obtained a culture of the mold from Fleming and grew the mold much as Fleming had done. Both gonorrheal infections in babies and an eye infection in a miner containing Pneumococcus were cured. Unfortunately, Paine did not publish any of the results of his experiments with crude penicillin and the next wave of crude penicillin work did not take place until the 1940s.

  With the coming of World War II and the work at Oxford by Florey and his associates, penicillin's antibiotic properties became well-known. Unfortunately, while the Oxford product was very potent, it was not very pure, nor was it initially available in large quantities. "This led a number of workers to re-examine the therapeutic properties of crude penicillin filtrates. Essentially, three methods were developed for the topical application of crude penicillin. These were 1) use of liquid filtrates which were usually applied using lint or other absorbent material; 2) the use of dressings inoculated with P. Notatum often in conjunction with liquid filtrates; and 3) the application of crude penicillin in agar, the so-called pen-agar method. In addition, crude filtrates were also occasionally administered by injection." [4,41]

  Due to the fact that the partially purified product became more widely available after 1945, the large-scale production of crude penicillin covered only a short period of time between 1942 and 1945. However, in this time period, numerous doctors and scientists grew and used crude penicillin to cure serious illnesses involving bacterial infections. From Cairo to Hawaii, Boston to New York, doctors and scientists refused to wait for the limited supplies of pure penicillin and manufactured crude penicillin to effectively treat thousands of infections. [4], [5], [6], [7]

  Crude Penicillin Production in the 1632 Univers
e

  As I've already noted, one of the biggest hurdles to penicillin production is just the idea that organisms found in the soil can destroy or inhibit the growth of bacteria. Once this idea is accepted, then it becomes necessary to find the organisms. Fortunately for Grantville, it is at least somewhat plausible that in a school the size of Grantville's, a biology teacher would have in stock kits containing Penicillium Notatum. An investigation of one of the premier suppliers of biological materials, Carolina Biologicals, reveals numerous microbiology kits that contain the mold. But culturing the mold is not producing penicillin. Doing that will require active and ongoing cultivation, like any crop. And, like any crop, you can improve your yield by fertilization, trace nutrient supplementation, and better media. In addition, like some crops, you will want a "biocide" to kill off organisms wanting to consume your product.

  Most improvement of penicillin yields will come about through active experimentation. While corn steep liquor was a preferred medium for commercial production in the mid-twentieth century, there are other media just as good, if we assume lower levels of production in a seventeenth-century environment. For example, "an extract of ground dried peas at 10 percent concentration has been reported as a successful penicillin media . . ." [10, 695] Another media from the same source was cottonseed meal. Still a third possible surface culture medium was "wheat bran moistened with an equal weight of water." [8, 262].