The Good Wizard

The Spanish Biscayan port of Gijon (pop. 110,000) was decked out in its fiesta best last week. Even its waterfront slums were bravely decorated with fish nets, crossed oars and ships' wheels laced with flowers. As the guest of honor, a smiling widow from Britain, entered a mean little square, she looked into the eyes of a blown-up photograph of her husband bearing the inscription: "To the Holy Virgin we pray: for us, many sardines; for the wizard who gave us penicillin, glory."

The widow was Greek-born Lady Fleming, 42, second wife of Bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming and a bacteriologist herself. Scientists are the 20th century's heroes, but nowhere has Fleming's death (TIME, March 21) been mourned as intensely as in Spain, where people have come close to canonizing the dour little Scottish Protestant. Main reason: long after infectious diseases were brought under control in more advanced countries, they persisted as wholesale killers in poverty-ridden Spain--until penicillin.

As Lady Fleming strode through Gijon's crowd last week, an old woman ran forward and spread two hand-worked silk shawls on the ground for her to walk on.

In Gijon's main plaza, the band followed the national anthem with a new Hymn to Fleming. Then Lady Fleming unveiled a bust of the man Spaniards call El Buen Sabio (The Good Wizard).

That same day, 400 miles away, the 200 village families of Navajas near Valencia dedicated a plaque reading: "To Fleming as a sign of gratitude." By week's end Barcelona, Spain's most bustling city (pop. 1,087,099) unveiled a marble bust, and the Gijon scene was repeated. Madrid soon will have its monument; Manzanares already has its Calle Fleming.

Spaniards cannot tell in cold figures how much the wonder drugs have cut the death rate, because their latest statistics are five years old. But Spain now produces annually 40 million doses of penicillin of 100,000 units each; with no prescription needed, many middle-class families decide for themselves when to use it, give their own injections. Perhaps the most enthusiastic testimonials to penicillin come from the most septic sources in Spain: the third-rate bull rings. In the past, many toreros lost a leg or died from common wound infections after being gored by a bull, but now the smallest arena has a first-aid squad armed with a penicillin syringe. One novillero last week put it in terms that, in Spain, were high praise indeed: "Thanks to Fleming. I can stand closer to the bull."

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