When Manhattan gives world's first penicillin shot : mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow

In May 1941, Dr Martin Henry Dawson told an international gathering of medical scientists that he had treated 4 cases of endocarditis with systemic penicillin and 8 cases of blepharitis with topical penicillin, both with hopeful results.

These results - widely reported by the New York Times, Newsweek, the wire services , even in South Africa's medical journal - first alerted the world to the fact that a half forgotten antiseptic from a dozen years earlier might have actually have wide promise as a life-saving antibiotic.

That was good enough to attract to Dawson's side a citric acid supplier to the soda pop trade, Brooklyn's then moderately sized Charles Pfizer & Co.

In March 1942, they gave Dawson and his patients the world's first commercially released penicillin.

In August 1943, further inspired by Dawson's successes, Pfizer went all out - against the general opinion of the world's drug trade - to produce massive amounts of natural penicillin , similar to what Dawson had used.

When the drug trade experts proved to be all dead wrong (no totally synthetic penicillin has ever commercially produced , even now 75 years later) , Pfizer ended up producing 80% of all the penicillin landed on the D-Day beaches and was for all of WWII, by far and away the biggest penicillin producer in the world.

Dawson's chemist, Karl Meyer, kept his friend , scientist Miloslav Demerec on Long Island , informed of the team's successes and it was Demerec who quickly invented the technology that continues to make Pfizer-style natural penicillin by far the cheapest way to produce the life-giving mold juice and all our other natural antibiotics.

But Dawson's "acorn efforts" fired up more than Pfizer and Demerec - he also inspired a hospital colleague now in the American army to badger his superiors to use penicillin on the dying wounded in Europe .... before the long war itself ended.

The Dawson success at home-made penicillin also got a doctor on Staten Island to grow some on the QT , to test his theory that penicillin could cure the dreaded syphilis quickly and safely - when he was proven right, the news electrified the international medical community even further on the possibilities in this new penicillin.

Similarly , Dawson's  acorn efforts got two former patients to "act up" on behalf of his penicillin-for-all approach.

One pushed America's all-powerful War Production Board to greatly up the amounts sought by the wartime American government - enough for all in the world who were dying for lack of it - not just making a small amount to only cure those Allied servicemen fit to return to battle quickly ,the original goal.

The other obtained penicillin for a dying girl by bringing in the mighty Hearst newspaper chain - and through them, recruiting America's millions of Dr Moms to lead the charge for more penicillin - now !!!

Penicillin was first discovered and worked up in Britain and the wide wartime distribution of British penicillin to the world's sick could have given Britain great diplomatic prestige to make up for her great losses during the war.

But Churchill's government was far too niggardly in its views on how little money should be diverted away from death bombs towards life penicillin during the war - and was totally besotted with Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey 's conviction that synthetic penicillin was the only goal to aim for.

So thanks to Manhattan "natural" penicillin, Pax Britannica quietly but firmly became Pax Americana.

Mighty oaks !