Which Oxford doctor volunteered to find human trial cases for penicillin?

Charles Fletcher volunteered to find human trial cases for penicillin at Oxford. He was a physician involved in the early clinical testing of the drug by Howard Florey's research team.

Before human treatment began, the Oxford researchers had tested penicillin mainly in laboratory cultures and infected mice. Fletcher first helped identify Elva Akers, who received penicillin to test its toxicity in January 1941. She experienced a temporary fever but no serious ill effects.

Fletcher then found Albert Alexander, an Oxford police constable with a severe bacterial infection of the face. Alexander initially improved dramatically after receiving penicillin in February 1941, but the laboratory ran out of the drug before the infection was eradicated. His case exposed the central production problem facing the Oxford team.

A common mix-up is to credit Florey, Chain or Norman Heatley with finding the human cases. They were central to developing and producing penicillin, but Fletcher is the doctor specifically associated with locating trial patients.