He was at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, and fortunately for him, a small team of doctors led by a Dr. Howard Florey had managed to synthesize a very small amount of penicillin, a drug that had been discovered 12 years before by Alexander Fleming but had never actually been  used to treat a human, and indeed no one even  knew if the drug would work, if it was full of impurities  that would kill the patient, but Florey and his team figured if they had to use it,  they might as well use it on someone who was going to die anyway.
Nalazio se u Radcliffe ambulanti u Oxfordu i, na njegovu sreću, mali tim liječnika predvođen doktorom Howardom Floreyem uspio je sintetizirati veoma malu količinu penicilina, lijeka kojeg je otkrio Alexander Fleming 12 godina prije, ali nikada nije primijenjen na čovjeka i nitko nije znao hoće li lijek djelovati, sadrži li nečistoće koje bi  mogle ubiti pacijenta, ali su Florey i njegov tim shvatili da ako već moraju, mogli bi ga upotrijebiti na nekome tko će svakako umrijeti.