WWII: the horrific medical 'Triaging' of New York Jews and Blacks

Here is a challenge I throw out to New York City's many amateur historians and genealogical detectives : find out more about the young New Yorker who was the first person ever in the world to be treated - successfully - with penicillin-the-antibiotic.

Particularly if you interested in uncovering more about the harsh wartime treatment afforded many first generation inner city New York Blacks and  Jews.

So, again, a challenge : find out more about PATIENT ONE , the young New Yorker(s)  who first introduced the Age of Antibiotics against fierce resistance from the medical establishment.

Re-setting the Allies' moral compass : the acid test of penicillin for wartime endocarditis

Please correct me : but in all my research I could find no indication that in his 15 years of medical research before October 16th 1940, (and he was a world-class expert in the area of strep bacteria) Henry Dawson had never written or spoken one peep - not one peep - on the subject of endocarditis, a very common and deadly disease, usually caused then by a variant of strep bacteria.

Medical ethics - not medical techniques - are probably the leading way to decrease or increase deaths due to war

How doctors and nurses morally regard all of their fellow human beings, rather than how they medically treat their actual, relatively few, patients, is probably the number one determinate in whether wars are relatively bloodless or particularly bloody.

The entire culture takes many of its moral cues from the medical professionals and when they (as in WWII Germany and America )  sanction or even advocate neglecting or killing those judged lesser than others, this attitude bleeds across the whole country and into the actions of its troops --with horrendous consequences.

Was there a Parran-Hearst Telegram ? (You provide the penicillin, I'll provide the pictures)

"Operator, get me Washington, tell 'em I'm from Hearst..."

There is no firm evidence that Citizen Hearst ever sent that infamous telegram to the famous war artist Frederic Remington in Cuba.

We all know which telegram:  the one where Remington is sent out to illustrate the ongoing civil war in Cuba, but finds all is quiet and begs to go home.

Hearst supposedly telegraphs him to stay : "(If) you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war."

"Little Belgium" : Floor "G" Columbia Presbyterian Hospital , Oct 16th 1940 - Feb 4th 1945

"LITTLE BELGIUM"

On October 16th 1940, the first day of registration for America's WWII Draft, Belgium was well past defending from the Boche.

If you don't like NEEDLES....

.... here is the guy you don't like:

MARTIN HENRY DAWSON
1896-1945

On October 16th 1940, on the 8th floor male ward of New York's famous Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, Dr Dawson stuck the first ever needle of antibiotics (penicillin) into patient
Charles Aronson, launching a billion needle jabs of antibiotics in the seventy years since.

OUCH !

This Fall marks the 70th anniversary of the much feared/ much revered antibiotic needle - at New York City's CUMC.

And if  CUMC are true to form, they will totally ignore it:

Plus ça change (plus c'est la même chose)