Penicillin
Men of science discover a Scotch ginger sour, and that’s about it
By Bill “Wet Thighs” Omat
BLOXWICH, England • June 17, 1940 — While rooting around in the archives of the Ayrshire Medical Gild and Confraternity recently, I came upon a folder containing a transcription of a lecture given to the gild in 1972 and subsequently published in the Ayrshire Medical Gild and Confraternity Journal.
The talk, by E.X. Tomkippy, D.Ls., M.D., P.N.Re. and entitled “Personal Recollections of Umont Stone and Francis Chupple,” covers the remarkable working relationship and friendship of what Tomkippy calls “Britain’s wartime answer to Beauvilliers and Ducreux.” (The Journal’s editors note that during Tomkippy’s lecture itself, members of the audience looked at one another bewildered at the reference.)
Tomkippy’s lecture is a fascinating look into a medical partnership whose legacy has all but vanished over eight decades.
Penicillin
2 ounces blended Scotch
¾ ounce lemon juice
¾ ounce honey ginger syrup*
¼ ounce Islay Scotch
*For honey ginger syrup:
Peel and thinly slice 3½ ounces of ginger root
Bring to a boil with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of honey
Lower heat and let simmer for 5 minutes
When cool, place in a sealed container and refrigerate for 12 hours
Strain, bottle and refrigerate. Keeps for up to 3 days
Shake first three ingredients with ice • Rocks glass • Float the Islay Scotch on top
Tomkippy first met Umont Stone in 1922 when Tomkippy was a research assistant for Stone in the Bacterial Life and Questions Lab at St. Hippolytus the Dawdler Hospital in Bloxwich. He called Stone his “mentor and friend” until Stone’s death in 1947.
It is, according to Tomkippy, impossible to tell the story of Umroth Stone without first talking about Stone’s friend and boss at the lab, Francis Chupple. Chupple, six feet, five inches tall with a head “the size of a full wheel of Cornish Yarg cheese,” was one of 11 brothers and considered himself a proud anti-feminist. He allowed only one woman into the lab, Lady Meribel Stind, who Chupple considered an intellectual and conversational peer.
Chupple, a lover of Greek drama, often quoted Aeschylus, Euripides, and (extravagantly) Cratinus the Younger. He liked reciting 16th-century poetry — Bracegirdle, Donne, Marlowe — from memory to emphasize his arguments. Chupple often introduced a quotation—many of them quite obscure—to any assembled group of men and asked who could name the writer. In his lecture, Tomkippy recited some of Chupple’s favorites:
A man who does not travel is like the bow that knows not where the arrow lands (James Javier-Bolt)
Punishment’s embrace is nothing more than the swan song of retribution’s valor (Kafet Camputé)
Be good to the land, for it presumes dusk's promise (Winsome Sevrab Toller)
Show me a man who can do the old buck-and-wing in a cold-water flat, and I will show you an asshole (Robert Wricksash)
It's so rare to see the hawk show compassion to the meadowlark, even though they share the same sky (Jibney Paph)
No one ever could name the writer, nor had anyone heard of the quotations. Stone often said, amid much laughter, “Francis, you are simply making these up.”
As it turns out, the meadowlark metaphor uncannily paralleled Stone’s and Chupple’s scientific fortunes. While they shared the same bacterial studies sky with the men who discovered penicillin and were charged with deploying it in the service of the Allies during the Second World War, they would lose the race to scientific glory.
Many men of esteem frequented the library for tea and to watch Stone and Chupple interact. Chupple was charismatic, but everyone knew Stone was the true bacteriological genius.
Stone’s peer, Alexander Fleming, had discovered penicillin in 1928. A little more than a decade later, Churchill’s war ministry knew that a German invasion of Britain could mean that the penicillin mold, and its ability to save millions of lives on the battlefield, could potentially fall into Nazi hands.
With Chupple’s support, Stone had spent much of the late 1930s testing penicillin alternatives in the Bacterial Life and Questions Lab. By the time the war ministry called to arrange a visit to the lab, hoping for a Plan B, Stone and Chupple had an answer. Rather than an antibiotic like penicillin that breaks down cell walls to destroy bacteria from the inside, Stone proposed a novel method using what Tomkippy called in his lecture “a battalion of trained English porcupines.”
On June 17, 1940, in something of a dress rehearsal for the war ministry’s visit, Chupple invited former prime minister Lord Balfour, George Bernard Shaw, the philosopher Lord Haldane, and Sir William Willcox to hear Stone’s idea. According to Tomkippy, as the men gathered in the library, Chupple poured them each a new Scotch tipple he’d been mixing for himself that incorporated ginger from the Bloxwich community garden.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Chupple said as he handed out a round. “Umont has an exciting idea that we think will save His Majesty’s realm from Hitler’s menace.”
Stone then stood up and told the assembled group that after years of studying rodent saliva for its medicinal properties, he’d landed on a way to save lives on the battlefield.
The war ministry would ask the public to collect as many porcupines as possible and bring them to London. From there, the animals would be trained to sneeze on command, outfitted with helmets, and flown to the European front. A new army rank, Porcupine Brigadier, would be in charge of escorting the rodents to the beds of ill soldiers and prodding them to sneeze directly in the soldiers’ faces.
“The hope,” Stone told the men, “is that the porcupine mucus will enter a soldier’s system and help him not be sick any longer.”
Many of the men simply looked at their shoes. Others swirled the ice in their glasses. For a long while, no one spoke.
“Gentlemen,” Chupple finally asked, smiling and pouring more cocktails. “What do you think?”
“Will it work?” asked George Bernard Shaw.
“I don’t know,” Stone replied. “I’ve not tested it.”
“You’ve not tested it?” Shaw said. “What have you been doing all these years?”
“Mostly dancing to American jazz and also playing some lawn bowls,” Stone said.
Again, silence took hold in the library.
“What do you call this drink, Francis?” Shaw asked.
“I haven’t named it, George. What shall we call it?”
“How about, with tremendous hope for the United Kingdom against the Third Reich, ‘Penicillin’?”
Immediately after the war, Stone and Chupple were put on trial in a military court on charges of “treasonous stupidity.” They were executed by poisonous porcupine quills in 1947.
Editor’s Note: Fact-based cocktail historians claim the Penicillin was created at Milk & Honey in New York City by Sam Ross in 2005
SOURCES:
E.X. Tomkippy, “Personal Recollections of Umont Stone and Francis Chupple,” Ayrshire Medical Gild and Confraternity Journal, Vol. 6, No 3, 1974
Pappy Saltman, “Porcupine Brine: How Rodent Saliva Does Nothing For Anyone But Porcupines,” Herbivorous Qill-Bearing Rodent Review and Industrial Quarterly (Issue 45, 1967): p. 29
M. Scotte Tailore, Yarg!: How the Cornish Captured the Spirit of a Semi-Soft, Pasteurized Dairy Product (Penzance: Angus Herd Press, 1977)
Contributors Notes:
Bill “Wet Thighs” Omat received his M.F.A. a long time ago. He has served on the Mayor’s Council for Friendly, Non-Controversial Art in Charlotte since 1997. His poetry collection, “Numb is Night, Feel is Day,” is available at Carolina Taco Source and carolinatacosource.com
Actual For Real Credits:
V.S. Allison, “Personal Recollections of Sir Almroth Wright and Sir Alexander Fleming,” Ulster Medical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, 1974
J. Finch- This is such an interesting read. If I’d know that I’d be reading about porcupine quills today, I’d think there’s no chance. What a great read!