P is for Penicillin 💊 Mystery Cache

#16 Drug Alphabet Series

This series combines two of my favourite "hobbies" - drugs and geocaching. It will inform you about some drugs ie. medicines that you may come across in your lifetime, treating a wide range of medical conditions; and also take you to some interesting places on the Sunshine Coast that you may not have been to before.

Penicillin (C₉H₁₁N₂O₄S) is an antibiotic used to treat a wide range of bacterial infections, including Gram-negative (eg. Escherichia coli), Gram-positive (eg. Staphylococcus aureus) and Anaerobes (eg. Clostridium difficile). There are several penicillins available in Australia such as Amoxycillin, Dicloxacillin and Phenoxymethylpenicillin. They are bactericidal and interfere with the bacterial cell wall peptidoglycan synthesis, eventually leading to cell lysis and death. Common (>1%) side effects include: diarrhoea, nausea, candidiasis, allergy. The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist, Alexander Fleming, in 1928; although in 1897, a French physician, Ernest Duchesne, studied and published the interaction between the bacteria Escherichia coli and Penicillium glaucum, a type of mould. Fleming made his discovery one morning in his laboratory at St Mary’s Hospital, when he noticed a petri dish containing Staphylococcus had mistakenly been left open and was contaminated by a blue-green mould from an open window. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming then grew a pure culture of the mould and discovered that it was a Penicillium mould, and coined the term “penicillin” to describe the filtrate of a broth culture of the mould. He was a famously poor communicator and orator, which meant his findings were not initially given much attention by other scientists and chemists. The development of penicillin for use as a medicine is attributed to the Australian scientist, Howard Florey and German, Ernst Chain in 1939, working with a team of researchers at the University of Oxford. By late 1940, the team had devised a method of mass-producing the drug and Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel prize for Medicine with Alexander Fleming. In 1943, the US war production board drew up a plan for mass distribution of penicillin stocks to Allied troops fighting in Europe. After World War II, Australia was the first country to make the drug available for civilian use.

The cache is near a quiet Mooloolaba canal and can be found at the following co-ordinates: 

tuvzi zxkozz-yjd ekhxfkt lpxue-ptf vpooz ucp nvtexfj bte yjd

fgtz ptf nvtexfj bte ljlue-unskf jfmskfy toy vpooz gowk iaojske goj frfbft

You are looking for something that may hold a dose of penicillin for a small giant.

FTF prize is a "happy pill" with a message inside. Please do not swallow!