Dr Peter Edward Baldry.

Abstract

![Graphic][1] Dr Peter Baldry died on 17 June 2016, aged 95. He would observe that he was so old that he had started practising medicine before the discovery of penicillin. Educated at King's College Wimbledon, he started to read medicine at Barts in 1938, shortly before the outbreak of the second world war and once war broke out, spent many nights firewatching on the roof of nearby St Paul's. On qualification, he went as a houseman to Southampton, which was dealing with a large number of military casualties. It was at Southampton that Baldry caught TB, from which he recovered and also was able to start using antibiotics, which had been brought to Europe with the arrival of US troops. He could recount exactly the case details of the first person on whom he used penicillin—a young woman with a very serious eye infection, which would otherwise have killed her, but who recovered fully within 24 hours. For his generation of doctors, particularly facing the consequences of the war, the availability of antibiotics had a huge impact. As soon as possible, Baldry was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps. Here a chance argument with a sergeant major allocating attachments was to influence … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif