Nova Scotian doctor Martin Henry Dawson made his scientific mark mark pioneering both DNA and penicillin.
His penicillin work, in particular, led ultimately to both the prevention of Rheumatic Fever and in curing the invariably fatal heart value disease it often produced : the dreaded SBE.
SBE , subacute bacterial endocarditis, is a by-product to what is currently killing and crippling so many of us right now : our own body’s immune system’s over-reaction to a virus or bacteria - in this case, Covid - damaging the outer surface of the heart : myocarditis.
Dawson would not be surprised to learn of the chain of events from a mild reaction to a virus to a healthy young athlete suddenly dying on the field.
News today of covid sometimes causing MG, Myasthenia Gravis, would hit Dawson personally hard : he contracted this then invariably fatal disease while under great stress at the start of his penicillin saga and it killed him four and a half years later, after he lived long enough to see his effort yield literally world changing results...
I'm starting to read about Martin Henry Dawson and perhaps fittingly I'll begin with the end first: "Henry Dawson DR. DAWSON DEAD; RESEARCH LEADER; Faculty Member at Columbia Pioneer in Penicillin Therapy --Aided War Department Studied Infectious Diseases Rockefeller Institute Fellow" by reading his obituary in the NY times. Any particular books or reading materials you feel are essential or core suggestions on the subject of Martin Henry Dawson? I'm sure the example of this man's class and kindness would be a something we could all do a little better to emulate. A little boost of human dignity in a dark time.
ReplyDeleteHow was he wounded in 1917-18?
ReplyDeleteGladys Hobby : Meeting the Challenge is in big university libraries that you cant currently enter - sigh : my blogs are actually the best source. But online google dawson and hobby and maybe meyer and chaffee together with words like penicillin or sbe subacute bacterial endocarditis, pfizer, columbia-presbyterian, Keefer. That will get you a slew of academic articles!
ReplyDeleteDawson was wounded by a fragment (possibly friendly fire) in big toe - worst spot for infantry !) at start of a battle - kept on leading his platoon, saved the battle when a more senior officer messed up and got the MC with citation as a result. Lost use of the big toe to infection leading to arthritis. But he out of action when his unit was literally decimated at Passchendaele . Next he was hit by machine gun fire while scouting as an artillery officer during the famous “100 days”. Lucky, again : it was a clean through and through and he lost his sporting abilities in that arm, but again it was a Blighty : took him out of the Front long enough to avoid the fate of others.
ReplyDeleteWhen I told his son he was a great basketball player before the war, his son said he was the world’s worst tennis player in his forties :when I explained his two injuries made that inevitable he was very surprised : that generation of parents were very tight lipped and he knew none of these details...
ReplyDeleteYes and some people born after that my grandfather was a dutch resistance fighter and later I infer though I'm not certain( it's probably a thouht crime to suggest) a dutch imperialist. He had the flavor of a man who could doublethink his way into being a freedom fighter and oppressor. An anti-facist and imperialist. The quintessential Dutchman I'd say. Yet essential compared to the herd of bystanders around at the time. found a military podcast recently. He told me plenty and yet he left out and I forgot some of it. the Americans bombing the university he wanted to go to, pulled rail spikes to render tracks crooked (didnt have access to explosives yet and BTW what is that a euphemism for?) forging IDs and travel documents to help the dutch underground pass german check points and helping civilians escape labour camps. They would be forging documents with unshelled still warm hardboiled eggs running them over Nazi stamps (like the eagle and swaistika) on genuine documents then on blank paper the heavy dark blue ink would transfer albeit sometimes with less than 100% accuracy faded and sometimes yellowed. He went as far as dosseldorf and Dortmund helping enslaved Dutch labourers escape back to Holland, got caught up at a German checkpoint because someone he was helping sold him out to a Germans (thanks dutch comrade almost destroyed my chance to be born), a german panzer officer let him go to the bathroom, my grandfather pulled a Lisa banfield and booted out a tiny screen opening escaped and made his way back to Holland. Well went into hiding as men do under these circumstances (sleeping in sheds and barns) working for the resistance. Gestapo pulled up one day while he was home for bite. Had to hide in a henhouse when his mother threw his plate in the stove to hide it. Rescued an american flyer in the battle of arnheim got him in civvy clothes onto a bike and delivered back to "the yanks" as he'd say. (After watching saving private Ryan at theatre: "those damn Yankees finally made a good war movie") donned a uniform and helped the British navigate the countryside, got blasted in the leg on patrol. (A full story in and of itself where nanny saved his life by being a BADASS) but then he went to Indonesia for years. Somewhere in that podcast drops a quote about how after you see your best friend cut in half by a mortar something changes inside of you... Well, the Americans bombing his university explains why old grandfather didnt have much use for some of his children choosing to be a mechanic instead of going to university for mechanical engineering ("witless moron could have went to university, I'd have paid for it, wasted his life") for sure he didnt tell his witless son half the stuff he told me. (What's that gun in the corner for Gramp y? What's that spear on the end of it grampy? What's a bayonet for? Why's it got an indentation? How often would you run out of ammo to ever need to use it? The final awnser was to stick in people and as to how often you might need it? Again and again. I didn't hear much about mortars cutting friends in half and about the pointlessness of dutch imperialism in Indonesia. Apparently the women there are beautiful. The MOST beautiful in the world. Well if that isnt ominous I shudder to think what a red blooded Dutchman who had tapped himself on the back (rightfully so) for facing the evils of fascism might do. I might have felt entitled myself. I wonder If grampy could have written an "Indonesian Nights". It was strange he'd rather have told me about men being ripped and shredded by war, my grandmother spoke tales of mass murder she seen the Nazi's commit that would shock a man, let alone a child. But the last 3 generations of his family being lawyers and the Americans bombing the university he wanted to go too? He'd have rather taken another bullet than to put on display the pain that caused him to his family.
ReplyDeleteI am reading JAMA 1944 "the clinical use of penicillin" (observations in one hundred cases) by Martin Henry Dawson and Gladys L Hobby now.
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