To answer some of the questions subscribers all over the world have been asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, writes and distributes its news.

Did you read that extraordinary communication from Arthur Cremin in TIME'S Letters column last week? Its most memorable sentence was this: "To hell with all mankind when, through indifference to the great men who alleviate pain, it permits them either to starve, die of broken hearts, or pass their last days in acrimonious obscurity."

What had so outraged Mr. Cremin was something he had learned from our cover story on Dr. Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin--the news that 63-year-old Dr. Fleming had received not a penny for his momentous achievement. Mr. Cremin decided to do something about it -- enclosed with his letter a $1 ,000 check to Dr. Fleming's order--asked TIME to forward it. TIME did--and added our own check for a second $1,000.

Perhaps some of our other readers would also like to join in with a contribution, small or large. * * *

This whole episode set us wondering about TIME'S earlier coverage of penicillin. We knew it had been considerable. But what we did not realize, until we started digging, was that so far as we can discover TIME was the first periodical, lay or scientific, daily, weekly, or monthly, to bring the U.S. public news of penicillin's success on human patients.

For it was two and a half months before Pearl Harbor that TIME carried a column-long story about the "marvelous mold that saves lives when sulfa drugs fail"--and went on to describe penicillium notatum.

That was on September 15, 1941--two months before the Journal of the American Medical Association took up the subject--almost a year before even the New York Times mentioned it. After that other publications pricked up their ears, and scattered reports on the new drug began to appear. Meanwhile, by the end of 1943, TIME had printed no less than six separate stories on penicillin.

I mention these facts not only because we're proud of them (even though TIME'S business is not scoops) but as an illustration of the philosophy which guides all our "back-of-the book" departments. Almost never, whether in Medicine, Art, Science, Books or Education, does the kind of news break which would make us stop the presses--as happens so often these days in World Battlefronts and Foreign News. Nevertheless, every back-of-the-book editor is just as eager as his colleagues up front to keep you quickly and reliably informed on the real and significant news within his special province.

To do this job for Medicine means studying anywhere from dozens to hundreds of abstruse, technical articles in journals of every sort, every week -- interviewing physicians, laboratory experts, physiologists from here to there -- all to bring out the two or three or four or five items of news which have a unique significance for you.

Maybe TIME'S Medicine department will never again have the opportunity of being the first to present a piece of news of such towering significance as the story of penicillin. But that will not stop TIME'S Medicine staff from its quiet and patient search, week in, week out, for the best in fact and presentation to make the whole world's medical news make sense for the layman.

Cordially,

P.S. The article on Dr. Fleming was written by Anna North, a Vassar graduate, a member of TIME'S staff since early in 1938, herself the daughter of a physician. It was researched by Elizabeth Wolff, for three years a laboratory worker at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.

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