The Almanac of Collapsing Records

The Mold That Cleared the Plate — London, 1928

the inoculation laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, a cramped room of benches and glassware

September 28, 1928 — a small hospital laboratory in London at the end of summer, the researcher just back from holiday, a stack of old culture dishes waiting to be washed on the bench

The dish that should have gone in the wash instead of history. This breach reads the LAB ASSISTANT at St Mary's on the ordinary morning the plates came back out: a bench of old culture dishes waiting to be cleaned, gaslight, carbolic, glassware, the researcher back from holiday and sorting through what spoiled. One plate is different — a spot of blue-green mold, and around it a clean ring where the staphylococcus has been dissolved to nothing. The witness is read only at the bench and at the holding-up-to-the-light: the vast consequence held softly in the background, never announced, the moment itself all quiet attention. The fragment is the subject's own: the small thing noticed instead of thrown away, the pause that turned a mistake into meaning — and the memory beneath it of a time they very nearly missed something because it looked like nothing, and something made them stop and look closer.

From the record

Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital in late September 1928 after a summer holiday to sort through culture plates left stacked on his bench
one discarded plate of staphylococcus had been contaminated by a blue-green mold, later identified as Penicillium notatum
around the mold colony the surrounding bacterial colonies had been dissolved, leaving a clear zone where no staphylococcus grew
Fleming's laboratory at St Mary's was a small, cramped room, and the plates had been stacked to be cleaned when he noticed the unusual dish
he named the antibacterial substance produced by the mold penicillin, and published his findings the following year

The era door

a narrow panelled door of dark varnished wood, a frosted glass pane in the upper half, a worn brass knob and a smell of carbolic and gas behind it

ST MARY'S LABORATORY — SEPTEMBER 1928

Walk this day yourself — free

A guided walk with Wallace — you are placed inside the record as a witness, and you carry a memory of your own back out. Free, ~20 minutes.

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