From: nickodell49@yahoo.ca 
  
 On Sun, 7 Sep 2025 10:19:06 +0100, Martin Brown 
 <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote: 
  
  
 >I have always worn a medic alert bracelet overseas due to my serious 
 >allergy to penicillin but these days supplanted by a ICE entry in my 
 >mobile phone and a small leather allergy bracelet on my wrist. The old 
 >one had chapter and verse inside it in tiny writing on origami paper. 
  
 When I was an infant, so I am told, I nearly died when the penicillin 
 they administered in hospital for a gastro bug nearly finished me off. 
 (No jokes about how the world might have been a better place etc, 
 thank you very much) For years I made sure that the first words I 
 uttered to any doctor were "I am allergic to Penicillin" and the only 
 reason why I never bought into the medicalert bracelet thing was 
 because I had "I am allergic to Penicillin" writ big on just about 
 everything else. 
  
 About twenty years ago, I was having a consultation with my GP of the 
 time when he said that it was a pity they couldn't administer 
 penicillin because it was such a useful and powerful antibiotic and 
 would I be willing to try a little experiment with him? Most of the 
 allergies reported in the 1940s and 1950s, he said, had subsequently 
 been found to have been caused by other ingredients and impurities in 
 the early manufacture of the antibiotic and not by the penicillin 
 itself. Since I was going to go into my place of work and would be 
 with other people for the next eight to ten hours and since he was 
 giving me his mobile phone number, just in case, would I be willing to 
 try some penicillin this time? If anything happened, he said, it would 
 be almost immediate but the eight to ten hours was playing on the safe 
 side. 
  
 Long story short is that there is no long story. I took the 
 penicillin, and absolutely nothing happened except my infection 
 cleared up remarkably quickly. I no longer claim to have any allergy. 
  
 I'd just say that, if you haven't had any recent experience of a 
 reaction to penicillin then it might be worth talking to your GP about 
 this since making it available to you would add another weapon to the 
 armory against infections etc. 
  
  
  
 Nick 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)