The very word "war" medicine seems to stir something vaguely Mars-like, deep within the soul of the chickenhawk doctor or scientist.
Successfully conceiving ,in an academic lab at the University of Chicago, a way to reduce combat deaths from shock seems to transport one almost up to the frontline evacuation hospitals, directly under hostile fire.
Being there, doing it, roughing it , all sweaty and virile-like : medical science with the smell of the locker room and the men's shower stall about it.
By contrast, what can any doctor - any real doctor - actually do about those dying of subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE) ?
These hopeless cases shouldn't even be occupying an acute hospital bed - particularly in wartime.
They should be handled by women - nurses - in a secondary hospice or in a palliative care situation at home.
And arthritis 'care' - not really medicine is it ? Helping impoverished old ladies too frail to bend over properly to get dressed and to do their toiletry.
Again - women's work. A job for personal care assistants and social work case workers. Social medicine.
But (Martin) Henry Dawson persevered , hung on in there , all through the war, treating those chronically ill with arthritis and the very 4Fs of the 4Fs, those dying of SBE .
Perhaps because he was that rarity : an American medical researcher in 1940 who already had a stirling war record in the front lines (in the medical corp, infantry and artillery), with a medal for valour and two serious war wounds to back him up.
The Military Cross winner from Venus, as it were ......
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
the Good , as well as the Bad , gets intensified under the pressures of wartime
In her time - during and after WWI - nurse Edith Cavell was as famous as Oscar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg and all the other WWII "Righteous Among the Nations" combined.
She devoted her life to nursing, mostly in Belgium though she was British herself, and didn't see why WWI should interrupt her practise of trying to save all patients, regardless of whether they were German, Belgian or Allied.
She was shoot however , by a German firing squad, for the war crime of helping Allied soldiers to escape the brutal German occupation forces enslaving Belgium.
Britain has claimed it had gone to war precisely to defend the right of neutral little Belgium not to be over run and then brutally enslaved by her bigger neighbours.
But many in her political and military elite thought it was right and just for the Germans to shoot her - they would have done the same - in fact did the same to Mata Hari.
World public opinion decidedly thought otherwise and her death became a big factor in turning neutral America to the Allied cause and for inspiring tens of thousands of youth in all the Allied countries to immediately join up as medical workers or soldiers.
News of her execution hit North American newspaper readers October 16th 1915.
It immediately inspired Martin Henry Dawson to become a medical orderly oversea.
He subsequently changed his life career plans and became a doctor.
On October 16th 1940, exactly 25 years later to the day he entered the medical world, Dawson ushered in one of those sort of earth-shaking events that only happens once every few centuries.
He gave two dying young men some of that elixir of life, natural penicillin, and so began our present Age of Antibiotics.
Neither man was Belgian, but for Dawson the principal was still the same : the small were being crushed beneath the interests of the big and he was as determined to fight that outrage as hard in WWII as he had in WWI.
These two men were being neglected by a medical community and drug company industry that had become focused on profitably war medicine for the 1As of the world , not on 'socialistic' social medicine to aid the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Dawson saw that solely a military effort to defeat the Nazis or the Huns was never going to be enough, not if there was no moral battle behind it.
Sinking to the level of the Prussian military mindset, in WWI London or in WWII New York he saw was no way to win the hearts and minds of neutral nations - or even for retaining the loyalty of one's own citizens.
So, no Dawson did not go forth into battle on behalf of Mars in this second world war as he had eventually in the first.
He stayed home and treated only people too '4F' to ever be useful for military duty or even for the fast pace and long hours of munitions factory work.
He worked on the Venus side of Manhattan exclusively and his direct war impact was limited to filling the hearts of people all over the world with renewed hope.
But i believe that his efforts saved far more lives ,and probably won the war quicker, than The Bomb ever did.....
She devoted her life to nursing, mostly in Belgium though she was British herself, and didn't see why WWI should interrupt her practise of trying to save all patients, regardless of whether they were German, Belgian or Allied.
She was shoot however , by a German firing squad, for the war crime of helping Allied soldiers to escape the brutal German occupation forces enslaving Belgium.
Britain has claimed it had gone to war precisely to defend the right of neutral little Belgium not to be over run and then brutally enslaved by her bigger neighbours.
But many in her political and military elite thought it was right and just for the Germans to shoot her - they would have done the same - in fact did the same to Mata Hari.
World public opinion decidedly thought otherwise and her death became a big factor in turning neutral America to the Allied cause and for inspiring tens of thousands of youth in all the Allied countries to immediately join up as medical workers or soldiers.
News of her execution hit North American newspaper readers October 16th 1915.
It immediately inspired Martin Henry Dawson to become a medical orderly oversea.
He subsequently changed his life career plans and became a doctor.
On October 16th 1940, exactly 25 years later to the day he entered the medical world, Dawson ushered in one of those sort of earth-shaking events that only happens once every few centuries.
He gave two dying young men some of that elixir of life, natural penicillin, and so began our present Age of Antibiotics.
Neither man was Belgian, but for Dawson the principal was still the same : the small were being crushed beneath the interests of the big and he was as determined to fight that outrage as hard in WWII as he had in WWI.
These two men were being neglected by a medical community and drug company industry that had become focused on profitably war medicine for the 1As of the world , not on 'socialistic' social medicine to aid the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Dawson saw that solely a military effort to defeat the Nazis or the Huns was never going to be enough, not if there was no moral battle behind it.
Sinking to the level of the Prussian military mindset, in WWI London or in WWII New York he saw was no way to win the hearts and minds of neutral nations - or even for retaining the loyalty of one's own citizens.
So, no Dawson did not go forth into battle on behalf of Mars in this second world war as he had eventually in the first.
He stayed home and treated only people too '4F' to ever be useful for military duty or even for the fast pace and long hours of munitions factory work.
He worked on the Venus side of Manhattan exclusively and his direct war impact was limited to filling the hearts of people all over the world with renewed hope.
But i believe that his efforts saved far more lives ,and probably won the war quicker, than The Bomb ever did.....
to RAMZI YOUSEF : a loving rebuttal
When asked why he hoped his 1993 bomb inside Manhattan's World Trade Center would kill all of the 50,000 people at the complex, the chief planner of the attack, Ramzi Yousef, said the planned massive carnage was partly to avenge the 250,000 Japanese killed by the bombs of the Manhattan Project.
It is true that the current wartime image of Manhattan does present a particularly Mars like character.
Pre-1945 Manhattan was not just the birth place of the technology that fuelled the Cold War atomic arsenals, it was also the financial and intellectual home of Eugenics - which culminated in The Holocaust.
But Manhattan is Janus-like as we all are, as the whole world is.
Within it are found big and small, good and bad, Eugenics and Emma Lazarus : indeed Venus, as well as Mars.
Venus even in, particularly in, times of war - seemingly the natural home of Mars.
Martin Henry Dawson's Manhattan Project , to liberate natural penicillin from corporate greed and eugenic medicine so that it could bring succour to the poor, the tired and the huddled in a war-torn world, saved far more lives than The Bomb ever lost.
If Ramzi Yousef had only known the full (in the round /the 360 degree) story of Manhattan, he might have thought twice about planning that 1993 bomb.
Much the same goes for those who planned 9/11 and those planning future assaults on Manhattan.
I am not a Manhattanite and reluctant to blow someone other city's horn unasked : but I simply feel that the world - and that included Manhattanites - must know more of the long ago wartime days when 'Manhattan was from Venus' , as well as from Mars....
It is true that the current wartime image of Manhattan does present a particularly Mars like character.
Pre-1945 Manhattan was not just the birth place of the technology that fuelled the Cold War atomic arsenals, it was also the financial and intellectual home of Eugenics - which culminated in The Holocaust.
But Manhattan is Janus-like as we all are, as the whole world is.
Within it are found big and small, good and bad, Eugenics and Emma Lazarus : indeed Venus, as well as Mars.
Venus even in, particularly in, times of war - seemingly the natural home of Mars.
Martin Henry Dawson's Manhattan Project , to liberate natural penicillin from corporate greed and eugenic medicine so that it could bring succour to the poor, the tired and the huddled in a war-torn world, saved far more lives than The Bomb ever lost.
If Ramzi Yousef had only known the full (in the round /the 360 degree) story of Manhattan, he might have thought twice about planning that 1993 bomb.
Much the same goes for those who planned 9/11 and those planning future assaults on Manhattan.
I am not a Manhattanite and reluctant to blow someone other city's horn unasked : but I simply feel that the world - and that included Manhattanites - must know more of the long ago wartime days when 'Manhattan was from Venus' , as well as from Mars....
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Manhattanites , "brag about your country"
It really shouldn't be my job to blow wartime Manhattan's horn.
Joe Howe, the Bluenosers' favourite son, always advised his countryman to brag about their country :
Brag of your country. When I am abroad, I brag of everything
Nova Scotia is, has or can produce and when they beat me at
everything else, I say, 'How high do your tides rise?
Don't let the 9/11 plotters define wartime Manhattan to the world
for you.
Admit The Bomb and wartime eugenic inclinations , but also talk up Henry Dawson and Patty Malone , Dante Colitti and Penicillin.
Take a bow ....
Joe Howe, the Bluenosers' favourite son, always advised his countryman to brag about their country :
Brag of your country. When I am abroad, I brag of everything
Nova Scotia is, has or can produce and when they beat me at
everything else, I say, 'How high do your tides rise?
Don't let the 9/11 plotters define wartime Manhattan to the world
for you.
Admit The Bomb and wartime eugenic inclinations , but also talk up Henry Dawson and Patty Malone , Dante Colitti and Penicillin.
Take a bow ....
Arabic translation of "Hyssop in a time of Cedar" ?
I sure hope so. Many translations. But since Arabic was the common language of the 9/11 plotters, it have been nice if they had known a little more about the city they are so determined to destroy.
They only saw Manhattan as "coming from Mars", as the birthplace of Eugenics and the Atomic War.
This is all true --- but only a partial truth.
They only saw Manhattan as "coming from Mars", as the birthplace of Eugenics and the Atomic War.
This is all true --- but only a partial truth.
Henry Dawson, Champion of the Second Chance ... and the Second Glance
Manhattan-based doctor (Martin) Henry Dawson championed the smallest, weakest and poorest of beings all his life.
On one hand, they were human beings, such as the institutionalized chronically ill at Goldwater Hospital.
Or discarded young people , dying needlessly from subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE).
In both cases, he wanted to give them a second chance at a near normal life in what was, after all, the famed City of the Second Chance.
On one hand, they were human beings, such as the institutionalized chronically ill at Goldwater Hospital.
Or discarded young people , dying needlessly from subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE).
In both cases, he wanted to give them a second chance at a near normal life in what was, after all, the famed City of the Second Chance.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Now I am become Hope, Healer of the Nations
Thanks to John Gray I can say, in a sideways allusion to his famous book, that wartime Manhattan displayed both a Mars and a Venus side to its Janus-like character and everyone instantly knows what I mean.
This is a lot easier than saying Manhattan have a Social medicine and War medicine side to its character and then have to spend a few thousand words and a long history lesson, to explain what I really mean.
Similarly the made-up quotation that titles this blog post is another sideways allusion --- this time to a very well known quote about Manhattan's best known wartime Project : the death-dealing Atomic Bomb.
Robert Oppenheimer, a Manhattan born and raised boy himself, defined the Bomb's nature (and America's newfound military and diplomatic power) by intoning a famous quotation from Hindu scripture :
But poetically, we can at least imagine that between 1943 and 1945 it did intone both....
This is a lot easier than saying Manhattan have a Social medicine and War medicine side to its character and then have to spend a few thousand words and a long history lesson, to explain what I really mean.
Similarly the made-up quotation that titles this blog post is another sideways allusion --- this time to a very well known quote about Manhattan's best known wartime Project : the death-dealing Atomic Bomb.
Robert Oppenheimer, a Manhattan born and raised boy himself, defined the Bomb's nature (and America's newfound military and diplomatic power) by intoning a famous quotation from Hindu scripture :
"Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds"Manhattan never itself intoned those words or the words at the top of this post - it can't .
But poetically, we can at least imagine that between 1943 and 1945 it did intone both....
Remembering when Manhattan was from Venus
"Now I am become Hope, Healer of Nations."
Just because that is all that the 9/11 bombers chose to recall , is no reason to emulate their example.
(Ie, the 911 planners chose only to focus upon the Mars side of Manhattan's Janus-like face.)
Wartime Manhattan : from Mars ... or from Venus ?
If I might be permitted to gently chide the citizens of Manhattan, may I suggest that they had done very little, themselves, to balance the horrific wartime image of their city created by being tagged as the place that 'birthed' the atomic bomb and its potential destruction of the entire world.
To the 911 bombers, it is the best known image of the borough.
(And by the way, it is only men, like the bosses of the best known wartime Manhattan Project , who talk about 'birthing the bomb' and think of naming it 'Little Boy'.)
Woman know better.
They actually do birth children and know that a bomb isn't a baby.
To the 911 bombers, it is the best known image of the borough.
(And by the way, it is only men, like the bosses of the best known wartime Manhattan Project , who talk about 'birthing the bomb' and think of naming it 'Little Boy'.)
Woman know better.
They actually do birth children and know that a bomb isn't a baby.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
To 911 Bombers, Manhattan was from Mars - Henry Dawson's story could have reminded them it was also from Venus
We must alway remember that there was an other Manhattan Project during WWII ; unfortunately one that remains almost totally unknown to this day.
It involved Dr Martin Henry Dawson sacrificing his own life, all in an effort to see that wartime penicillin's scanty production and distribution was de-militarized by the Allies and then made available to all the world's 'tired, poor and huddled'.
It involved Dr Martin Henry Dawson sacrificing his own life, all in an effort to see that wartime penicillin's scanty production and distribution was de-militarized by the Allies and then made available to all the world's 'tired, poor and huddled'.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Janus Manhattan : "destroyer of worlds" or "provider of life-affirming balm" or both ?
 |
| Penicillium Monstrance |
When native Manhattanite Robert J Oppenheimer proclaimed - portentously - "Now I am become DEATH , the destroyer of worlds" after the Manhattan Project's first atomic explosion , he seems to set Manhattan's wartime image in concrete for all time.
It was this existing image of Manhattan that the 911 bombers relied upon to soften the outrage against their mass killings.
But the real Manhattan is far too complex and dynamic to ever present just one face to the world --- and so it was with its activities between 1939 and 1945.
For Manhattan ,Janus-like , had another (almost unknown and largely mis-understood) Project during WWII.
Dr Martin Henry Dawson the medical scientist had a very simple thesis : that Life inevitably 'Comes in All Sizes'.
As a result, 'global commensality' (all life dines at a common table) is a necessity forced upon all of us living beings and we might as well learn to accept it.
But the tenet of his age, The Age of High Modernity (1875 -1965), was that Bigger was Better, in fact the inevitable path of progress.
So small life would have to give way and disappear before the forces of the giants of life.
Dawson believed that WWII would end quicker, with fewer deaths, if the Allies set out to defeat Hitler morally, as well as just militarily.
Instead they were seeming intent on matching Hitler's evil doctrines, albeit in a muted fashion, cut for cut.
Killing American patients like Charles Aronson by passive neglect was hardly morally different than killing German patients like Martin Bader by active injection.
In an era that exalted the Big, Dawson dared to defend the small : small patients like Charlie and small cures, like natural penicillin from mold slime.
Another native Manhattanite , Gladys Hobby, was the most religious devout on Dawson's tiny team.
Instead of a text from Hindu religion, we might choose to see a quasi-Christian symbol in her practise of daily carrying petri dishes of sectoring penicillium mold to the wards holding the dying patients like Charlie.
She did it, she says, to sustain their morale so they might live long enough for enough penicillin to be produced by her team to save their lives.
Anyone who as ever seen a photograph of sectored penicillium mold on a flat petri dish can not help but think it reminded them of something , but just what ?
Spikes of blue with golden droplets on top radiate in all directions, ending in a circle of white mold growth.
It is a radiant, jewel like image - rather like a stylized sun.
Like a - that's it - a monstrance : that sun-like object that contains the sacred Host and is held aloft by the priest and minister on special occasions.
A stylized sun, radiating in all directions, warming all, was always an universal symbol of life and hope, even before Christianity.
The Host in a monstrance - Jesus's body for real or as a symbol - is the unifying symbol of the Christian tradition : offering up the hope of (eternal) life , particularly as it is often exposed before those facing death.
But sometimes Jesus offered an earthly life as well as an eternal heavenly life.
So even Lazarus died, physically, in the end, as would patients like Charlie : but even so , every additional day on earth seemed a precious boom and balm to the troubled patient and their families.
Eventually a nearby doctor , Dante Colitti, was inspired to emulate Dr Dawson's government-bucking actions to obtain illicit penicillin supplies for discarded Americans.
He got the masters of Yellow Journalism , the Hearst papers, to go to bat on behalf of the Yellow Magic and a beautiful thing soon happened.
For when a two year baby named Patricia Malone got snatched back from death , around the world 'Doctor Mom' soon was demanding that the men get their butts off the couch and start seriously producing penicillin, now ! ----- fifteen long years after it was first discovered.
Dawson was only a part of the long story of penicillin and antibiotics but he is the whole story of wartime penicillin.
Without his moral drive, the medical cum scientific cum commercial powers-to-be would have still been trying to make highly profitable , patent-able ,synthetic penicillin years after the war ended, instead of mass producing life-saving natural ( public domain) penicillin during the war that so badly needed it.
Dawson's moral urgency personally moved the family of the Pfizer boss and moved that boss to mass produce natural penicillin as soon as possible - and it was Brooklyn based Pfizer that made the vast bulk of the wartime penicillin., let us never forget.
My book about Dawson's Manhattan Project is written as a deliberate rebuttal to the story the 911 bombers told against Manhattan, to try and justify their mass killings.
What they said about Manhattan wasn't totally untrue but it told only part of her story.
Because, like Life itself, Manhattan 'Comes in All Sizes' : she has been the home to unbelievably good things as well as bad things.
I would so much like to ask the 911 bombing planners and their supporters if they or their loved ones had ever been saved by cheap abundant penicillin and do they know that the effort to de-militarize penicillin and make it available to all was spawned in the same Manhattan they love so much to hate ?
Hopefully this book will be the start of that conversation we need to have with the Manhattan-haters.....
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
When nations bully
From 1931 to 1946 , the world saw an ending series of bullying sessions, as big and aggressive nations bullied small nations and small peoples and small individuals.
Contemporary historians are tending to extend WWII to run from 1931 to 1946 --- which is a good first step.
But they still tend to view it exclusively through political and military lenses, but might do well to start calling a spade a spade .
Because contemporary parents and children (if not historians) increasingly recognize bullying as something that does not begin and end in the childhood schoolyard ....
Contemporary historians are tending to extend WWII to run from 1931 to 1946 --- which is a good first step.
But they still tend to view it exclusively through political and military lenses, but might do well to start calling a spade a spade .
Because contemporary parents and children (if not historians) increasingly recognize bullying as something that does not begin and end in the childhood schoolyard ....
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