In the late 1940s, glass mason jars packed with moist soil samples regularly traveled 150 miles through the U.S. Post Office. According to the Science History Institute, these parcels moved between microbiologist Elizabeth Lee Hazen at the New York State Department of Health’s laboratory in New York City and chemist Rachel Fuller Brown at her bench in Albany. Together, the two researchers were hunting for hidden chemical agents produced by microorganisms in soil, establishing a long-distance laboratory partnership built entirely around postal transit across New York State.
Two Scientists and a Postal Route
Hazen and Brown worked for the Department of Health’s Division of Laboratories and Research. Inspired by Alexander Fleming's penicillin and Selman Waksman's work screening soil microorganisms for antibacterial agents, Hazen began searching for antifungal compounds in 1944. Bacterial antibiotics were transforming medicine, but treatments for fungal infections remained primitive. Working in New York City, Hazen gathered soil samples and tested cultured organisms in vitro against two specific fungal targets: Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. When a cultured organism demonstrated clear antifungal activity against these targets, Hazen sealed the living culture inside a mason jar and mailed it north to Brown's laboratory bench in Albany.
Mason Jars and Solvent Extractions
Upon receiving a soil culture in Albany, Brown used painstaking solvent extractions to isolate the active chemical compounds responsible for the fungal inhibition. Operating long before high-performance liquid chromatography and modern separation tools were invented, Brown used liquid solvent techniques to separate individual chemical fractions. Once she isolated a promising ingredient, she shipped the purified sample back to New York City. Hazen then tested the compound against the target fungi and evaluated its toxicity in laboratory animals. Most of the early chemical extractions that killed the test fungi turned out to be highly toxic to animals. The search progressed through hundreds of unsuccessful soil samples until Hazen screened dirt collected from the garden of her friends, the Walter B. Nourses.
From Garden Soil to Nystatin
From the Nourse garden sample, Hazen isolated a novel actinomycete strain named Streptomyces noursei. Brown extracted its active component, which destroyed the target fungi without harming host animals. Discovered in 1950, the compound was initially named fungicidin. When Hazen and Brown discovered that the name fungicidin was already registered for another substance, they renamed their compound nystatin to honor New York State. Division director Gilbert Dalldorf urged them to announce the discovery, but because public health laboratories lacked resources for drug manufacturing, Dalldorf arranged for the Research Corporation to handle patenting. E. R. Squibb subsequently purchased the patent rights from the Research Corporation to conduct human clinical trials and handle commercial production.
Patenting a Breakthrough and Giving Back
Nystatin became the first widely effective medical treatment for human fungal infections, targeting diseases of the skin, mouth, vagina, and intestinal tract. Rather than keeping the patent royalties, Hazen and Brown designated their earnings to create the Brown-Hazen Research Fund through the Research Corporation. For decades, those sales royalties funded life sciences research grants. Today, nystatin remains an essential antifungal medication, reflecting how a postal partnership established a self-sustaining engine for scientific research.
AI-generated editorial illustration; not a documentary photograph.
Source: Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Rachel Fuller Brown
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