History's first ever antibiotics injections were expected to be of pure synthetic penicillin

Back at the start of the 1940s, two highly skilled biochemists (Karl Meyer and Ernst Chain) both confidently expected to quickly synthesize artificial penicillin, as they knew natural penicillin was a relatively small biological molecule of only about 350 Daltons.

After 100 weeks of hearing this reoccurring promise of quick results from Chain, his imperious boss, Howard Florey, reluctantly decided to inject his first human patients in February 12th 1941 with still-impure natural penicillin.

Henry Dawson, normally the most diffident of men, changed his mind about waiting till  co-worker Meyer's synthetic penicillin arrived in January 1941, and after only five weeks into their joint penicillin efforts and without so much as a backward glance, injected his first patients with impure natural penicillin on October 16th 1940.

In an era that worshipped the Big, the Fast and the New, he championed the small, the slow and the old - and changed our whole world not just once but twice

The small and the slow and the old

A Canadian newspaper recently touted some Canadian based scientists as saying that the new techniques allowing the mass sequencing of genomes in test tubes, from DNA gathered up from all over the world, is letting science reveal hidden secrets from the distant past.

Hurray for Man !

Not mentioned is the fact that it is actually bacteria and their enzymes that do all the heavy lifting or that it was a Canadian (Martin Henry Dawson) who first put bacteria and DNA to work in a test tube eighty five long, dusty years ago.

Age of Antibiotics' Patients Zero : Aaron Alston of St Nicholas Ave, Harlem and Charles Aronson of Vyse Ave, the Bronx

Thanks to the hard work of two relatives of these penicillin pioneers (Claude Jay for Aaron and Lisa Liel for Charles), these forgotten individuals can emerge from the shadows almost fully formed.

DNA, Penicillin & Phenology : what great works A H MacKay hath wroth

Pioneering DNA and Penicillin scientist Dr Martin Henry Dawson (1896-1945) was undoubtably Nova Scotia Superintendent of Education A H Mackay's most illustrious student.

Dawson's pioneering investigating of the hidden complexities of microbial life (HGT, quorum sensing, molecular mimicry, biofilms, natural penicillin) flew in the face of all the 'modern' wisdom of the scientists and educated public of his day.

But in the end, it paved the way for our current post modern ways of wisdom.

1945's PROGRESS report : the newest and the biggest had produced atomic bombs and Auschwitz --- the oldest and the smallest had produced penicillin

The newest and biggest (dare we also say the brightest?) human civilizations at the top of the ever upward and outward arrow of progress had given the 1945 world nuclear and genocidal horror - but the tiny weak stupid fugal slime cells at the oldest bottom of that arrow of progress had given us life-saving penicillin.

Not a good year, then, for the whole idea of Progress itself....

Manhattan natural penicillin Project a psychological antidote to the mental horrors unleashed by the Manhattan synthetic nuclear Project

In 1945 and 1946, many thoughtful people began realizing that human ingenuity had produced a nuclear bomb system powerful enough to kill an entire planet - a green (rather than merely a mineral-containing) planet that they had never really regarded as alive enough and fragile enough to be killed , until now.

For they began realizing that what Manhattan's Bomb's explosive force, searing heat and mutation-causing radiation could do to humans it could also do to all other living things.

Of all the Charles Aronsons in America in 1940...

Regardless of their age or residence, the 1940 American national census only shows about 38 Charles Aronsons and a half dozen spelled with close variants ---- making the task of finding history's missing Patient Zero of the Age of Antibiotics much easier.

October 1940's Waves of the Future : Henry Dawson's vs Anne Lindbergh's

No book - not even Hitler's Mein Kampf or Stalin's Foundations of Leninism - so outraged Dr Martin Henry Dawson as early October 1940's The Wave of the Future by the quasi Christian author Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Perhaps even enraged him enough to advance his team's planned first injections of  penicillin into human patients by three months - so his own 'wave of the future' would compete with her 'wave of the future'.

And in the end, he won.

Bickel penicillin book vivid -- at cost in accuracy

Lennard Bickel's 1972 book, "Rise Up To Life", was the first book that covered the wartime saga of penicillin as it occurred around the entire world.

But it was also one of the first written by someone who was not an eyewitness to the actual events.

But Bickel, an Englishman who emigrated to Australia in mid life, was a very good journalist and interviewed all and everyone he could find from the wartime era and got lively quotes from all.

Unfortunately, as a journalist rather than a historian, he sometimes chose to sacrifice all the facts in order to keep things lively and vivid.

Nothing can stop an idea that even tiny children can understand : sometimes, the Last May Be First

I argue that nobody really understood (or understands) the world of sub-atomic particles as it emerged, in ever growing complexity, from the 1890s to the 1940s and that as a result, it failed to change the childlike faith people still held in Hard Reductionism and Determinism.

But even as a tiny kid, I got the point of the story of microbe-made antibiotics - particularly as a tiny , powerless, kid.

Antibiotics' Patients Zero, part 2

In the end, finding out about the Patient Zero I knew the least about, Aaron Alston, turned out to be by far the easiest.

But first I had to make all sorts of naive mistakes.

Antibiotics' Patients Zero , part 1

When I began the search for Antibiotics' Patients Zero ten years ago, I very naively thought like a historian, not a genealogist, and as a result, I got precisely nowhere for ten wasted years.

1939-1945 : DISNA Jews fight for life at home and abroad

Earlier I had incorrectly assumed that the Alex Aronson from Bronx found on lists of members of an "immigrants from Nesvizh mutual assistance society" (a landsmanshaften) was the Alex Aronson from Vyse Ave Bronx.

The less you knew of The Bomb and Penicillin the better you understood them

Call it "The Chris Mooney Effect".

Remember when he reported that well informed and well educated Republicans were less, not more, likely to believe the scientific consensus about coming dire climate change ?

I see a similar result among people in 1945 who had too much media-mediated knowledge about WWII's Atomic Bomb and Penicillin.

Janus Manhattan's Children : Dad's Bomb or Mom's Medicine ?

I think of  "Janus Manhattan's Children"  as a sort of women's book that should be read, first and foremost, by men --- because women generally, 'already get it'.

October 15 1940 : a Fighting 69er fights SBE instead ?

Almost everyone dimly recalls hearing about New York's famous "Fighting 69ers" / "the Fighting Irish" - an infantry regiment more formally known as the 165th (infantry) Regiment, New York State National Guard,--- part of New York State's 27th Division.

Though a state regiment, it in fact recruited exclusively from NY City.

On October 15th 1940, the day before America's first ever peacetime draft registration, the day before History's first ever antibiotic shots, it was 'federalized' and began moving to the US Army's Fort McClellan in Alabama.

And there by hangs yet another intriguing tale in the wartime penicillin saga.

Genealogy, like melodies, is all about those 'permutations and combinations' we learned in school

Every wonder how a composer get a endless stream of unique melodies from 'just seven notes' ?

 Ever wonder how researchers find people lost to history, with only a tiny handful of facts to guide them ?

Math popularizers explain all those wonderfully different melodies and all those wonderful genealogical successes by the simple arithmetic of combinations and permutations.

Was Martin Henry Dawson's sub clinical MG pushed into a severe MG case by his penicillin work ?

Thousands of deaths later, doctors have come to realize that many,many drugs can turn quietly sub clinical cases of Myasthenia Gravis (MG) into full blow cases.

Situations that turn ordinary people into lifelong patients who now require constant and closely monitored medical interventions for their very survival and well being.

75 years ago, on a day supposedly devoted to 1As, two New York City 4Fs made medical history instead

It is an irony beyond all measure that on America's first ever peacetime Draft Registration Day, October 16th 1940, a day designed to separate the 1A sheep from the 4F goats, two 4Fs (a black man from Harlem and a Jew from the Bronx) instead made medical history by ushering in our current Age of Antibiotics !

And they made history not by accident of sheer coincidence either.

No second acts for most war veterans - except in booming NY ?

F Scott Fitzgerald's most famous line is also his most misquoted line.

For Fitzgerald - like his character Jay Gatsby - was ever the eternal optimist , never the cynic.