At 94 years of age, Pamela Stean grew up in a world where illnesses that now can be cured by a course of antibiotics were shrouded by fear. With her sister and brother-in-law working at the coalface of Penicillin production, Pamela remembers life before antibiotics. She has a unique insight into one of the most transformational medical advances of the century.
Living through WW2, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and a time before the NHS, Pamela shared some these early memories with Antiobiotic Research UK.
‘I had to walk knee-deep in the sea in October – it was freezing’
Born in the 1920s, Pamela’s childhood was a far cry from that of children today. People were terrified of getting infections. ‘I had impetigo on my knee when I was about 7 or 8’, she explains. Impetigo is a contagious skin infection caused by bacteria, which can now be easily treated by antibiotics either directly to the sores or swallowed. But not then.
‘It took ages to get that better’, remembers Pamela. ‘I had to go down to the coast, and I had to walk knee-deep in the sea in October – it was freezing. I had to make sure my knee was covered by the water’. This is a stark contrast to what a doctor would prescribe today! But healthcare was very different in the early 20th century, and not only due to the lack of antibiotics.
‘We tended to put off seeing the doctors and we were terrified of the dentist’
‘When I was younger there was no NHS, so we had to pay when we went to the doctor… so we tended to put off seeing the doctor and we were terrified of the dentist.’ Pamela explains. And this wasn’t entirely unjustified. ‘My mother’s first husband died of a dental infection. We were afraid that it would happen to us too’, Pamela says. ‘It was such a shame – I’m sure that type of infection could have been treated in under a week with antibiotics these days.’
Things have changed significantly since then, and Pamela experienced the improvements first hand. ‘I caught impetigo again as an adult and went to the doctors’, Pamela recalls, telling of when she got the diagnosis. ‘“Impetigo!” I said in fear, thinking of all those awful weeks I’d spent trying to get rid of it as a child. But I had antibiotics and it was gone in about a week or 10 days,’ – no need to wade through the sea this time.
‘I’d cycle past her house and wave through the window, shouting hello through the vent’
Almost a century ago, some memories from Pamela’s childhood bear a striking resemblance to the images of quarantine and isolation that we’ve all become familiar with during the pandemic. ‘My childhood friend had TB and I wasn’t allowed to see her,’ Pamela remembers. ‘So I’d cycle past her house and wave through the window, shouting hello through the vent!’
Before antibiotics, TB was rife. ‘Lots of people had TB back then’, she says. ‘I remember one of my neighbours who had it saying, “it’s quite fashionable these days!” – I remember thinking that it wasn’t a fashion I wanted to be part of!’ And Pamela was right – Tuberculosis (TB) was recognised as one of the UK’s most urgent health threats at the start of the 20th century.
Doodlebugs and sickness bugs – antibiotics and the war
Pamela’s early life was far from stress free. Living through the war, her childhood and early working life was greatly disrupted.
‘There were about six months when I didn’t go to school because they were building air raid shelters. When I did go back, we used to wear tin hats to go to school,’ she says.
Pamela showed promise in her studies, but there were many barriers to continued education. ‘The polytechnic arranged for me to stay on and study further,’ recalls Pamela, ‘but when I arrived, one of the bombs had landed on the school. All that was left was a sad place with curtains blowing out of the windows – the whole thing had gone – fortunately no one was in it at the time’.
Pamela was no stranger to the devastation of bombs. ‘They travelled faster than sound, so they’d blow up, and only then would you hear them coming,’ she recalls. ‘One of them landed a little way from our house and I remember thinking “gosh it’s very cold inside” – that’s when I noticed all the windows and front doors had been blown off. It got to midnight and my stepmother refused to go to bed without a front door on. We had to go and find a plank to put in its place.’
But throughout all this chaos, great advances were being made in science. Penicillin was coming onto the scene. Pamela has a unique insight with both her sister and brother-in-law working directly on penicillin at GSK.
‘He’d lost her, but if they’d have used Penicillin, she’d have been better in about four days’
Penicillin was first mass-produced in the 1940s and took until the middle of the decade to be available to the British public.
‘We all went out after the war to try to advertise Penicillin and get the doctors to use it,’ Pamela says. Fortunately, she recalls, the public perception of Penicillin was largely positive. ‘We were all glad when it came along’, she recounts. ‘I think the first time people really heard about the use of Penicillin was as something that soldiers took in the war to treat infections.’
With soldiers being held in such high esteem in this period, could this have been a positive endorsement that helped to drive the widespread public acceptance of this miracle drug? It’s hard to say for sure, but Pamela did tell of the highly respected British Army Officer, Bernard Montgomery. His wife had suffered from an insect bite which became infected and fatally developed into septicaemia. ‘He lost her,’ Pamela recalls, ‘but if they’d have used Penicillin, she’d have been better in about four days’.
‘Only use it when you really need to’
Looking back at how far medicine has come since her childhood, Pamela appreciates the transformation antibiotics have made to healthcare. However, reflecting on their use today, ‘they can be a bit over-used actually,’ she says. “Only use them when you really need to” – that’s what my brother-in-law used to tell me, and he worked on Penicillin! “Leave it for when you really need it” he’d say’.
At ANTRUK, we understand the importance of antibiotics in healthcare. But with the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, we face the very real threat of returning to a situation similar to the pre-antibiotics days Pamela remembers.
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