From acorns, oaks ...

I can't speak confidently about the impact upon the adult population of the 1950s of the startling news that all the world's best lifesaving medicines were being made by tiny, weak, slimy beings.

The tiny and the despised besting the smartest chemists in the universe

Natural products made by the despised residents of dank basements, rotting bread, jungle dirt and sewage water - not synthetic chemicals made by middle class university men in big labs in the biggest and most civilized nations of the world.

But I can say confidently how this seemingly little detail affected one particular small child from that era : me.

Big time !

And when I grew up, it still affected me as a young adult.

And still affected me , inspired me in fact, years later when I worked - at first all alone and with very few resources - to help create Nova Scotia's first political party for environmentalists....

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.

Postmodern science was born in early postwar childhoods

Tiny weak beings, just like me, found in the ordinary and despised basement slime, in jungle dirt and in the filthy sewer water of Sardinia all were besting the smartest chemists in the universe ("big people" in kidspeak) and producing all the medicines that were saving the lives of tiny kids like me.

It was a grownups' science story that even I could rock and roll !

Otherwise we only learned in science of the effort of thousands of important big people, working in vast clean white labs  with billions of times our weekly allowance, making atomic energy for us - and for world-ending bombs....

Environmentalism : HOPE, as well as fear ...

It is easy - too too easy - to credit fear, fear of Fifties nuclear war and fallout in particular, as the main reason for the Early Seventies worldwide rise of the Environmental Movement.

As one of those young 1950s Boomers who did join the formally organized environmental movement early in the 1970s and who now has a great interest in the history of the early days of the Environmental Movement,  may I beg to differ?

Not seeking tenure, I offer up only my memories as the primary archival source for my historical thesis.

I was an unusually small and skinny kid, very nearsighted, hated formal sports and loved books.

This might have been alright - I boldly loved to physically explore my neighbourhood and was a bit of a wiseapple in class,  but for the fact that we moved frequently, or so it seemed.

( I attended three different schools in both Grade Three and Grade Eight.)

I got bullied as a result.

My dislike of the big and the strong and my sympathy for the weak and the small developed right there on the playground.

I enjoyed the stories my teachers told of how the antibiotic medicines that had saved the lives of kids like me that had come (could only come) from small and primitive weak microbes living in sewer water, basement slime and the jungle mud of primitive lands.

microbial davids vs Chemist Goliaths

I really enjoyed this unlikely triumph of these microbial davids over the Chemist Goliaths of smug modern science.

For while the salad days of the Chemist and Chemical Synthesis had faded by time I first went to school, their unaltered hubris has merely transferred out to another school - that of the physicist.

So while our Fifties collective motivation was rather shallow and utilitarian (we valued Mother Nature's other beings only from the fear that their extinction might rob us of our rightful access to something useful and profitable) I joined in to the general view that we must treasure - not destroy - even the smallest and most slimy of beings.

I hope I went beyond that .

Beyond that to a belief that the smart aren't always as smart as they seem nor the dumb as dumb as they seem and that all life has a form of high intelligence merely by being able to survive and flourish so long and had a right to exist on its own terms.

WWII as a study in the smart humbled and the humble exalted 

 I know for a fact this was the reason I so enjoyed all the franker, more revisionist, books about WWII that had been coming out in a flood by the mid 1960s - books I dearly loved as a pre-teen.

Mostly by accident, they were much less 'rah rah' than the first wave of postwar military histories.

They still thought they were celebrating bravery but , unconsciously, by providing many new details, they tended to reveal the unflattering sides of military operations the propaganda  ministries had earlier successfully concealed.

I saw WWII revealed as six long years of the supposedly smart nations and leaders humbled and the supposedly dumb nations and leaders exalted.

In 2004, I stumbled upon the little known WWII tale of the supposedly smart chemists' synthesized penicillin humbled and the supposedly dumb natural penicillium exalted ---so given my history,  how could I resist making it much better known ??

Birthing Antibiotics & The Little Red Lighthouse --- their true life unlikely connection in space, time and intent

Antibiotics :

(1) A class of lifesaving drugs  (2) more powerful than anything yet invented by advanced Big Science, made by tiny and primitive microorganisms.

So what on earth is their connection to a beloved children's picture book ???!!!

Let's take that definition apart , separating part 1 from part 2:

Antibiotics needn't be used only as lifesavers, but to the general public it is their use as lifesavers, working when nothing else modern medicine could do to save a life, that so rouses our admiration and wonder.

So, for example, Penicillin can be used - relatively ineffectively - as an external antiseptic.

It was used almost exclusively, for its first twelve wasted years, by Alexander Fleming as a minor laboratory clearing agent in certain throat swab tests.

Lifesaver ('Systemic') : drugs taken internally and spread systemically throughout the entire body

To be a lifesaver, almost all drugs must be taken internally (by pill or needle) and thus distributed throughout the entire body (including the surface skin, from blood vessels below the skin's surface.)

This is because for an infection to kill us, it usually must be in blood stream and spreading to different parts of the body than where it first started.

Because - often - infections can been successfully combated by the body's defences alone, if confined to only one initial spot.

Infections usually kill not by direct action in any one spot, but by overwhelming our defences on multiple fronts : creating too many infectious sites, all happening at once, for even a healthy body - by itself - to stop.

So the antibiotic penicillin first became the ANTIBIOTIC PENICILLIN on October 16th 1940, when it stopped being dabbed on the skin and was first injected, ie used as a systemic, into two patients in at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre in New York City.

Now here is where the beloved classic children's illustrated storybook , The Little Red Lighthouse, comes in - unexpectedly - into the story of Antibiotics.

Two classic 'come from behind underdog stories' of the little guys besting the big guys came from this same site :

Little Red Lighthouse, George Washington Bridge, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre

The doctor who first used penicillin as an antibiotic , Martin Henry Dawson (1896-1945) and the woman who wrote the story of the Little Red Lighthouse , Hildegarde Hoyt Swift (1890-1977) both did so, at about the same time and for much the same reasons.

WWII was a six years long miserable period in history when Big Science invented Big Weapons manufactured by Big Corporations for Big Armed Forces, under orders from the Big Governments of the Big Powers - to use mostly on the lands of the little powers and the little people.

People left like minor cogs in Big Machines - they felt like they were being treated like children.

Children feel that way all the time .

Which is why stories like Hildegarde Swift's 1942 story about the Little Red Lighthouse besting the brand new 'Great Gray Bridge' and its big lights were always popular about the young ones.

(The little red lighthouse still exists, lying just below the real life George Washington Bridge completed in 1931 and just in front of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre.)

The brand new George Washington Bridge's big lights were indeed much brighter than those of the little red lighthouse, but they were also very high above the water and in a fog couldn't be seen by ships as well as the little red lighthouse's light down at sea level.)

Swift, during the darkest days of the war, also wanted to reassure children that 'might wasn't always right' and that the horrible events in Europe (with small nation after small nation being quickly swallowed up by Germany between 1939 and 1941) won't go unaddressed.

Adults read the story to their children but probably didn't absorb its subtle wartime message.

Naturally made penicillin : 'The Little Fungus That Could'

But Dawson suspected - correctly - that war-weary adults might absorb and enjoy the story of how a medicine made naturally by the humble - primitive - little - basement slime fungus was besting the finest medicine made by Big Science in Big Factories.

He hoped his new medicine would save lives but above and beyond that, he hoped it would send a subtle message to the powers to be and their true masters - the public.

Yes, early penicillin did save lives when nothing before it could.

 But don't underestimate slime-made penicillin's appeal, as a classic 'come from behind' story , to a war-weary public simply tired of being pushed around and tired of six years of seeing all the innings going to the big guys....

Oct 16 '40 : Dies Mirabilis , marking 75 years of Antibiotics and Draft registration

I might just do an Erik Larson and interweave Jack Kerouac and Martin Henry Dawson's experiences of that Dies Mirabilis, October 16th 1940, together in one book - and not separately as two books ...

Draft Registration, October 16th 1940 : 75 years Young !

Due out in early 2015 is my book about the origins of America's 75 year old peacetime draft registration process.

It is another in my series of books on "Agape Penicillin".

If my book about the 'Dawning of Antibiotics' on October 16 1940 focuses on the 4Fs among America's youth, this book will focus instead on the 1As among her youth.

But I do not think it is odd or a coincidence that both events share the exact same 75th anniversary, right down to the day.

I believe that Dr Martin Henry Dawson began his antibiotics crusade on that crucial date, October 16th 1940 , as a deliberate and provocative counterpoise.

A counterpoise to 1940s America's undue emphasis on only valuing its children to the extent that they are fit enough to kill other children.

He felt all children - as well as all people - are worthy of the best possible health care simply because they are our fellow human beings.....

* Dawson had the freedom to experiment with penicllin that October day only because the very pro-war President of Columbia university had suspended classes to ensure a perfect registration drive.

After football scholarship undergrad Jack Kerouac dutifully registered that day, he went forth to play his second football game for the university.

He broke his leg and his career in football was over - its loss and literature and the Beats' gain ....