Is it true that Lord Ran­dolph Churchill edu­cated Alexan­der Flem­ing, the dis­cov­erer of peni­cillin, as a result of Flem­ing (or his father) res­cu­ing Churchill from drown­ing in a swamp when young Win­ston was a youth—and that Fleming’s dis­cov­ery, peni­cillin, saved Churchill’s life years later in 1943? A friend of mine has sent me this email regard­ing it and I wanted to ver­ify . —L.M.

The Churchill Cen­tre receives this ques­tion reg­u­larly, but the story is entirely untrue. Nei­ther Flem­ing nor his father were with Churchill at the times sug­gested. Offi­cial biog­ra­pher Sir Mar­tin Gilbert inves­ti­gated, and found that the dates did not coin­cide. Nor was peni­cillin used to cure Churchill when he fell ill in Carthage in 1943.

I have cited later ref­er­ences in the past, but in 2009 reader Ken Hirsch used Google Book Search to track what is likely the first appear­ance of this myth: the Decem­ber 1944 issue of Coro­net mag­a­zine, pages 17-18, in the story, “Dr. Life­saver,” by Arthur Glad­stone Keeney.

Mr. Hirsch also tracked Arthur Keeney (1893-1955), a Florida and Wash­ing­ton D.C. news­man who served dur­ing World War II in the Office of War Infor­ma­tion. “Since Keeney’s story was pub­lished only a year after Churchill was stricken (promi­nently) with pneu­mo­nia,” Mr. Hirsch writes, “I think it may be the first appear­ance of the myth.”

The orig­i­nal arti­cle, with ref­er­ence to a 1950 appear­ance of the story, appeared in Finest Hour #102, Sping 1999.

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