During his lifetime, Dr Henry Dawson only gave penicillin to several dozen endocarditis patients, Charlie Aronson first among them ; only saved several dozen lives, Charlie among them.
Dawson's pioneering effort to inject Charlie with penicillin on October 16th and 17th 1940 (Dies Miribilis) certainly didn't directly save many lives.
But the moral fact that Dawson cared enough in the first place about Charlie-the-person, to pioneer in making and to giving him penicillin, has certainly saved tens and tens of millions of lives ever since Dawson's premature death in 1945.
If only the greater cultural milieu surrounding Dawson and Charlie had been as willing - nay as eager - to save Charlie 'the 4F of the 4Fs' as Dawson was, it might also have been as willing - nay eager - to save the Jews of Europe as well.
Showing posts with label John L Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John L Smith. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The elevator pitch for "By stubborn, Stars we steer"
Some people call it the takeaway sentence while others call it the elevator pitch : that line that tags a movie's every radio/TV spot and poster, the same line that got the movie green-lighted (financed) in the first place.
"A Rare Breed Indeed" : US wartime Int'l treaties on the A-Bomb, Lend-Lease, Bases for Destroyers ... and synthetic penicillin
Most of the antibiotics we use today (beta-lactams) are still the close relatives of the first and best-ever antibiotic, Penicillin G.
They are all still produced, by mold slime, ie naturally : and this will probably always be so.
They are produced almost as bulk chemicals, thousands of tons worth annually, a multi-billion dollar industry that lies at the very foundations of the multi-trillion dollar health industry.
But there is (and was) no international treaty, closely negotiated at the very top level (Lord Halifax and Dean Acheson) , at the height of total war and over an extended period of two years, on the patents and scientific information involved in this crucial production of natural penicillin.
They are all still produced, by mold slime, ie naturally : and this will probably always be so.
They are produced almost as bulk chemicals, thousands of tons worth annually, a multi-billion dollar industry that lies at the very foundations of the multi-trillion dollar health industry.
But there is (and was) no international treaty, closely negotiated at the very top level (Lord Halifax and Dean Acheson) , at the height of total war and over an extended period of two years, on the patents and scientific information involved in this crucial production of natural penicillin.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Howard Florey sole hero of 1944 American national radio play on Penicillin
 |
| Here, Howard Florey rules ! |
Not surprising then that the series featured an half hour show on "The Story of Penicillin" as soon as the censors would let it : which interestingly enough was April 24th 1944 --- starring Howard Florey as the one-and-only who brought us the miracle of penicillin !
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Meet the DOCTOR MOM who brought us wartime penicillin when it could do us some good, not 5 years after the war ended
 |
| MAE SMITH |
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Needed : a MORAL history of Wartime Penicillin
 |
| SBE fatal to heart valves |
Monday, September 10, 2012
Nova Scotian-born Dr Henry Dawson and the "Invention" of systemic - natural - penicillin
The "Invention" of systemic - natural - penicillin
 |
| Discovery vs Invention |
Saturday, September 8, 2012
The triumph of natural penicillin : Uncle Tom's Cabin, Mark II
 |
| MkII : WWII moral battle over penicillin |
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Mae Smith ; the real life DOCTOR MOM that gave us penicillin
Readers sometimes asked me if DOCTOR MOM was a real person.
I usually say "No, Dawson was trying to reach all the Doctor Moms in America , via his success in preventing all the deaths and all the worries caused by childhood Rheumatic Fever."
But I have reflected and maybe my readers are right - yes, there was was one specific Doctor Mom that Dawson reached - perhaps, indeed, only one that he reached.
But one can be more than enough.
Her real name was Mae Smith, though she is sometimes known as Mrs John l Smith or ,more accurately, as Mary Louise Smith.
Her husband owned 25% of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team and after his death, she held those shares.
More books have been written on these , the original "Boys of Summer", than any other team.
Many people seem to rate the day the team left Brooklyn as more significant in the decline of America than Watergate or Viet Nam.
The other Mary Louise Smith is also very important in this story : she was the Smiths' daughter.
John L grew up in a small seaport in Connecticut and he loved to sail more than almost anything and he loved his cottage in his old home town.
One day when the family was out in the cottage, far from big cities and big city high tech hospitals, young Mary Louise said she had a stiff neck. And a headache. And a fever. And that in fact, she generally wasn't feeling very good indeed.
That put her family in a real panic.
Not as much as it did the local doctors - it was obviously Spinal Meningitis - still a deadly, every-minute-counts-disease even today with antibiotics.
By the time they got her to a big hospital, it was too late to even stabilize her - though surviving a late case of spinal meningitis can be a very mixed blessing - it often leaves you physically and mentally challenged.
An immediate (and I mean like yesterday) massive needle full of Penicillin was the best cure then , as it still is today.
Penicillin had been discovered at the time of Mary Louise II's death, but had not yet been produced, let alone mass produced.
In 1941 and 1942 and in 1943, as Dawson always naggingly reminded any and all visitors from John L.'s firm, it still was not being mass produced.
"But if it had been developed back then and if it was a staple in the black bag of even the smallest backwoods doctor, Mary Louise would be alive today."
"How many more Mary Louises would have to die needlessly before the world got enough penicillin to make a difference?"
And on and on.
John L had heard this all too many times before - he felt that Dawson simply didn't understand the technical and economic issues that prevented his firm from taking the plunge.
"What risk ", said Dawson , "are you not planning to take the company public, and to do a stock split? This war has made you guys even richer - give something back to the fighting man - and the fighting woman."
I bet John L would go home at night, get a stiff drink and unwind at his wife, all about what a nag that Henry Dawson was -- "why he even said this and he dared say that."
I don't think John L bought Dawson's line.
But to her credit, I think Mrs John L eventually did.
I bet, late at night, just when John L was trying to get some shuteye , she would softly bring up the question of 'why couldn't the firm take a little risk for once, do something extra for the war effort?'
I think it must have rubbed off eventually, because if his firm was cautious, John L was even more so.
But between late August 1943 till March 1944, that 'stiff little man' was like a man possessed, so determined was he to get a big new, NATURAL, penicillin plant on line as soon as possible.
(This was just at the very time that the Florey team at Oxford University were semi-secretly announcing that they had totally synthesised penicillin chemically and that to continue to rely on natural production by the mold was a 'retrograde' step - so John L was betting against the received opinion.)
But they went ahead anyway: shifts of crews building around the clock, lit by Klieg Lights and posters everywhere reminding employees that this was a "Race Against Death."
"The quicker this building is done, the quicker penicillin can go out to the wounded boys at the front."
It paid off because by D-Day Pfizer, his firm, was producing most of the world's penicillin---and the company has never looked back.
We never did get any of that wonderful 'Refined Penicillin' out of the chappies at Oxford - but 'Brooklyn Crude' pulled us through the war anyway.
And I like to think a lot of the credit for starting Pfizer on the road to becoming the world's biggest company should go to a quiet but persistent push from "Doc" Mae Smith.....
I usually say "No, Dawson was trying to reach all the Doctor Moms in America , via his success in preventing all the deaths and all the worries caused by childhood Rheumatic Fever."
But I have reflected and maybe my readers are right - yes, there was was one specific Doctor Mom that Dawson reached - perhaps, indeed, only one that he reached.
But one can be more than enough.
Her real name was Mae Smith, though she is sometimes known as Mrs John l Smith or ,more accurately, as Mary Louise Smith.
 |
| MAE SMITH in 1954 |
More books have been written on these , the original "Boys of Summer", than any other team.
Many people seem to rate the day the team left Brooklyn as more significant in the decline of America than Watergate or Viet Nam.
The other Mary Louise Smith is also very important in this story : she was the Smiths' daughter.
John L grew up in a small seaport in Connecticut and he loved to sail more than almost anything and he loved his cottage in his old home town.
One day when the family was out in the cottage, far from big cities and big city high tech hospitals, young Mary Louise said she had a stiff neck. And a headache. And a fever. And that in fact, she generally wasn't feeling very good indeed.
That put her family in a real panic.
Not as much as it did the local doctors - it was obviously Spinal Meningitis - still a deadly, every-minute-counts-disease even today with antibiotics.
By the time they got her to a big hospital, it was too late to even stabilize her - though surviving a late case of spinal meningitis can be a very mixed blessing - it often leaves you physically and mentally challenged.
An immediate (and I mean like yesterday) massive needle full of Penicillin was the best cure then , as it still is today.
Penicillin had been discovered at the time of Mary Louise II's death, but had not yet been produced, let alone mass produced.
In 1941 and 1942 and in 1943, as Dawson always naggingly reminded any and all visitors from John L.'s firm, it still was not being mass produced.
"But if it had been developed back then and if it was a staple in the black bag of even the smallest backwoods doctor, Mary Louise would be alive today."
"How many more Mary Louises would have to die needlessly before the world got enough penicillin to make a difference?"
And on and on.
John L had heard this all too many times before - he felt that Dawson simply didn't understand the technical and economic issues that prevented his firm from taking the plunge.
"What risk ", said Dawson , "are you not planning to take the company public, and to do a stock split? This war has made you guys even richer - give something back to the fighting man - and the fighting woman."
I bet John L would go home at night, get a stiff drink and unwind at his wife, all about what a nag that Henry Dawson was -- "why he even said this and he dared say that."
I don't think John L bought Dawson's line.
But to her credit, I think Mrs John L eventually did.
I bet, late at night, just when John L was trying to get some shuteye , she would softly bring up the question of 'why couldn't the firm take a little risk for once, do something extra for the war effort?'
I think it must have rubbed off eventually, because if his firm was cautious, John L was even more so.
But between late August 1943 till March 1944, that 'stiff little man' was like a man possessed, so determined was he to get a big new, NATURAL, penicillin plant on line as soon as possible.
(This was just at the very time that the Florey team at Oxford University were semi-secretly announcing that they had totally synthesised penicillin chemically and that to continue to rely on natural production by the mold was a 'retrograde' step - so John L was betting against the received opinion.)
But they went ahead anyway: shifts of crews building around the clock, lit by Klieg Lights and posters everywhere reminding employees that this was a "Race Against Death."
"The quicker this building is done, the quicker penicillin can go out to the wounded boys at the front."
It paid off because by D-Day Pfizer, his firm, was producing most of the world's penicillin---and the company has never looked back.
We never did get any of that wonderful 'Refined Penicillin' out of the chappies at Oxford - but 'Brooklyn Crude' pulled us through the war anyway.
And I like to think a lot of the credit for starting Pfizer on the road to becoming the world's biggest company should go to a quiet but persistent push from "Doc" Mae Smith.....
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
a patient died with every Alumina run
During the thick of the fiercest combat in WWII, the entire US Navy got the same amount
of scarce purified patient-ready penicillin as did just nine American Drug Companies , "for their own use".
I've read this statement in dozens of penicillin accounts without asking - "why so much patient-ready penicillin for just nine companies and what on earth did they need it for?"
After all, other patient-ready penicillin was being allocated for clinical trials run by a separate organization, the NAS-COC - the drug firms had no hand in it.
Their routine testing for anti-bacteria activity took incredibly tiny amounts of penicillin - about one millionth the amount allocated to them.
What these accounts have elided out of their story is that all of this patient-ready penicillin was being destroyed in experiments to totally purify and totally synthesis penicillin, at a time when patients were dying because of lack of penicillin.
"The Chemistry of Penicillin", a massive monograph released by Hans Clarke of Columbia University in 1949, was the official history of the six year long unsuccessful effort to synthesis penicillin in commercially-salable quantities, an effort that involved thousands of chemists and technical workers, millions of dollars and the best university and industry teams in the Allied countries.
In every way, it was a parallel effort to the Columbia University-based portion of the Manhattan Project.
Not just in its scale but also in the fact that it too started with a yellow powder consisting of a mixture of substances that were 99.99% alike and could only count itself successful when it ended up with one shiny clear crystal that was 100% pure.
The Bomb would have dropped on Hiroshima with or without success from Columbia's chemists --- but the Cold War wouldn't have happened if they had failed.
All the Cold War Bombs, on all sides, were built with molecule-separation technology perfected at Columbia during WWII.
By contrast, the molecule-separation technology that gave us pure crystals of penicillin came from the Wool Institute of Northern England in 1938 and proved useful enough to win a Nobel prize for its two developers.
And if you hear me once, you'll hear me a million times - their work was not peer-reviewed-grant-based research - (ie,it wasn't DIGNIFIED SCIENCE but OPERATIC SCIENCE to use my own terms).
The origins of this technique (chromatography) are even more interesting - they came from a Russian botanist and were long ignored by chemists because, (a) well he was a botanist after all and (b) it was all way too easy.
Chemists adhere to the notion that if you aren't in pain after you exercise, you haven't done it enough - every chemist's scientific papers are a testosterone-rich tale of endless amounts of back-breaking effort and mounds of chemical reagents used up to achieve the end result.
But chromatography worked so well it is now one of the most widely used chemical techniques - it relies on the fact that even molecules that almost totally alike are still absorbed onto other molecules at ever so slightly different rates.
(Note that in separating the two types of almost similar uranium for the Bomb, it was known they had slightly different weighs and sizes and so it was hoped they would tend to go through tiny holes at slightly different rates .)
They did, but sooooooooo slowly that some molecules put into the production line in the mid-1940s were still inside the same production line 40 years later when the Cold War ended !
Now it is true that this is a physical process ,not a chemical process, in the final analysis but the effort to make it all happen was really a physical chemist's type of work, rather than something a regular physicist would excel at.
In Dutch, the word for Chemistry is Scheikunde - "the art of separation" - a very good way to describe much of chemistry - and frequently the part of it judged most useful/most profitable to industry and society.
Back to the process by the Wool Institute's Synge and Martin, as applied to penicillin.
In this process, during each run of the process, 5 to 7 grams of patient-grade penicillin (that is between 2.5 and 25 million units of penicillin depending on the year the work was done) was poured down a column of alumina or silicon gel, and the penicillin separated itself out into various colored bands.
These different colored bands of sticky wet alumina were carefully cut apart with a knife
and then the biologically most active colors were used in further tests to get almost pure samples of various types of penicillin.
Think about how those chemists must have felt as they performed each run- they weren't heartless men and women.
They knew that each run used up and destroyed enough patient-grade penicillin to save the life of six children with blood poisoning or one young adult with SBE (sub acute bacterial endocarditis). Sulfa drugs weren't working - so no penicillin meant death.
The Chemistry of Penicillin describes many of these runs and the specific amounts of penicillin used in each run.
I love facts and figures and dates and prices (up to a point) and hate the fact that most accounts of penicillin either avoid them - or worse - screw them up by factors of one thousand or more ( mistaking grams for milligrams is routine, for example).
The facts and figures in this massive tome of a book look reliable to me and I feel that it -and they - are underused resources.
Even more useful are the facts and figures that are not there.
The firm (Pfizer) that produced most of World War II's penicillin, the firm that was the first to make patient-ready penicillin, a firm early into the blessed circle of synthesis research, is almost totally absent from this book in any meaningful way.
It had a vast amount of experience, having worked with penicillin almost longer than anyone else and it was making lots of money and taking on lots of talented staff during the war.
It even got the second or third largest allocation of penicillin to play with.
Yet with all these advantages, it produced almost nothing remotely useful towards the synthesis of penicillin.
This isn't just me (a totally non-chemist) saying this.
Accounts years later that tend to give an summary overview of the road to synthetic penicillin, written by penicillin chemists with no axe to grind, see nothing in Pfizer's work to highlight. Even very minor penicillin players get more attention than Pfizer.
So where did all that Pfizer experimental penicillin go then, if not into useful synthesis work?
John L -(John L Smith ,head of Pfizer's penicillin efforts) -care to explain ?
"I secretly broke my solemn signed agreement with my government and diverted the penicillin away from synthesis to give to patients dying of SBE, patients that that very same government had refused to treat."
Why ?
"Because I had just bet the farm and Pfizer's entire fate on the guess that my biologists on this side of the Hudson could make deep tank penicillin successfully - and make it better and quicker than Merck's chemists could make artificial penicillin on their side of the Hudson. I was betting that soon there would be more penicillin than we would know what to do with - plenty for Second Front soldiers AND SBEs here at home."
"Was I right; was I right ?!"
Yes, you were. And some SBE patients and their families are very grateful you bucked your wartime government and diverted penicillin towards dying SBE patients.
"Well, I must say I learned how to divert penicillin and 'buck' from the best - Henry."
Dawson ?
"Yes,the old stubborn mule, Henry Dawson ..."
of scarce purified patient-ready penicillin as did just nine American Drug Companies , "for their own use".
I've read this statement in dozens of penicillin accounts without asking - "why so much patient-ready penicillin for just nine companies and what on earth did they need it for?"
After all, other patient-ready penicillin was being allocated for clinical trials run by a separate organization, the NAS-COC - the drug firms had no hand in it.
Their routine testing for anti-bacteria activity took incredibly tiny amounts of penicillin - about one millionth the amount allocated to them.
What these accounts have elided out of their story is that all of this patient-ready penicillin was being destroyed in experiments to totally purify and totally synthesis penicillin, at a time when patients were dying because of lack of penicillin.
"The Chemistry of Penicillin", a massive monograph released by Hans Clarke of Columbia University in 1949, was the official history of the six year long unsuccessful effort to synthesis penicillin in commercially-salable quantities, an effort that involved thousands of chemists and technical workers, millions of dollars and the best university and industry teams in the Allied countries.
In every way, it was a parallel effort to the Columbia University-based portion of the Manhattan Project.
Not just in its scale but also in the fact that it too started with a yellow powder consisting of a mixture of substances that were 99.99% alike and could only count itself successful when it ended up with one shiny clear crystal that was 100% pure.
The Bomb would have dropped on Hiroshima with or without success from Columbia's chemists --- but the Cold War wouldn't have happened if they had failed.
All the Cold War Bombs, on all sides, were built with molecule-separation technology perfected at Columbia during WWII.
By contrast, the molecule-separation technology that gave us pure crystals of penicillin came from the Wool Institute of Northern England in 1938 and proved useful enough to win a Nobel prize for its two developers.
And if you hear me once, you'll hear me a million times - their work was not peer-reviewed-grant-based research - (ie,it wasn't DIGNIFIED SCIENCE but OPERATIC SCIENCE to use my own terms).
The origins of this technique (chromatography) are even more interesting - they came from a Russian botanist and were long ignored by chemists because, (a) well he was a botanist after all and (b) it was all way too easy.
Chemists adhere to the notion that if you aren't in pain after you exercise, you haven't done it enough - every chemist's scientific papers are a testosterone-rich tale of endless amounts of back-breaking effort and mounds of chemical reagents used up to achieve the end result.
But chromatography worked so well it is now one of the most widely used chemical techniques - it relies on the fact that even molecules that almost totally alike are still absorbed onto other molecules at ever so slightly different rates.
(Note that in separating the two types of almost similar uranium for the Bomb, it was known they had slightly different weighs and sizes and so it was hoped they would tend to go through tiny holes at slightly different rates .)
They did, but sooooooooo slowly that some molecules put into the production line in the mid-1940s were still inside the same production line 40 years later when the Cold War ended !
Now it is true that this is a physical process ,not a chemical process, in the final analysis but the effort to make it all happen was really a physical chemist's type of work, rather than something a regular physicist would excel at.
In Dutch, the word for Chemistry is Scheikunde - "the art of separation" - a very good way to describe much of chemistry - and frequently the part of it judged most useful/most profitable to industry and society.
Back to the process by the Wool Institute's Synge and Martin, as applied to penicillin.
In this process, during each run of the process, 5 to 7 grams of patient-grade penicillin (that is between 2.5 and 25 million units of penicillin depending on the year the work was done) was poured down a column of alumina or silicon gel, and the penicillin separated itself out into various colored bands.
These different colored bands of sticky wet alumina were carefully cut apart with a knife
and then the biologically most active colors were used in further tests to get almost pure samples of various types of penicillin.
Think about how those chemists must have felt as they performed each run- they weren't heartless men and women.
They knew that each run used up and destroyed enough patient-grade penicillin to save the life of six children with blood poisoning or one young adult with SBE (sub acute bacterial endocarditis). Sulfa drugs weren't working - so no penicillin meant death.
The Chemistry of Penicillin describes many of these runs and the specific amounts of penicillin used in each run.
I love facts and figures and dates and prices (up to a point) and hate the fact that most accounts of penicillin either avoid them - or worse - screw them up by factors of one thousand or more ( mistaking grams for milligrams is routine, for example).
The facts and figures in this massive tome of a book look reliable to me and I feel that it -and they - are underused resources.
Even more useful are the facts and figures that are not there.
The firm (Pfizer) that produced most of World War II's penicillin, the firm that was the first to make patient-ready penicillin, a firm early into the blessed circle of synthesis research, is almost totally absent from this book in any meaningful way.
It had a vast amount of experience, having worked with penicillin almost longer than anyone else and it was making lots of money and taking on lots of talented staff during the war.
It even got the second or third largest allocation of penicillin to play with.
Yet with all these advantages, it produced almost nothing remotely useful towards the synthesis of penicillin.
This isn't just me (a totally non-chemist) saying this.
Accounts years later that tend to give an summary overview of the road to synthetic penicillin, written by penicillin chemists with no axe to grind, see nothing in Pfizer's work to highlight. Even very minor penicillin players get more attention than Pfizer.
So where did all that Pfizer experimental penicillin go then, if not into useful synthesis work?
John L -(John L Smith ,head of Pfizer's penicillin efforts) -care to explain ?
"I secretly broke my solemn signed agreement with my government and diverted the penicillin away from synthesis to give to patients dying of SBE, patients that that very same government had refused to treat."
Why ?
"Because I had just bet the farm and Pfizer's entire fate on the guess that my biologists on this side of the Hudson could make deep tank penicillin successfully - and make it better and quicker than Merck's chemists could make artificial penicillin on their side of the Hudson. I was betting that soon there would be more penicillin than we would know what to do with - plenty for Second Front soldiers AND SBEs here at home."
"Was I right; was I right ?!"
Yes, you were. And some SBE patients and their families are very grateful you bucked your wartime government and diverted penicillin towards dying SBE patients.
"Well, I must say I learned how to divert penicillin and 'buck' from the best - Henry."
Dawson ?
"Yes,the old stubborn mule, Henry Dawson ..."
Monday, August 16, 2010
the Coghill versus John L race
In October 1943, a committee of three chemists, including the head of the US Agriculture Department division of NATURAL Fermentation, said that SYNTHETIC penicillin would a reality in six months - in April 1944.
" Bet the farm on it ! "
That was a mighty good deadline for synthetic penicillin true believers to aim for .
Because April 1944 was about the last possible date for any sort of penicillin to enter the US Army supply pipeline, be transported to the Kansas City Kansas central army medical supply depot and then be shipped all the way back again to the East Coast and shipped
across the Atlantic to the Southern England ports, to be loaded on hospital ships bound for D-Day's beaches.
If this chemist (Robert D Coghill) had been proven right, he would have put his own Division out of business - so he had a conflict of interest about a mile wide and mile deep.
A conflict of interest between his natural chemist's fetish to achieve the complete synthesis of anything and everything and the duty he owned to his employers at the Agriculture Department.
But across town, another chemically-oriented key mover and shaker, was having a change of heart.
John L (John Lawrence Smith, the head of Pfizer) was leading one of the firms heavily involved in synthesising penicillin.
But moved by the plight of a child so like his own daughter that he had earlier lost to meningitis, he was secretly breaking the spirit of the wartime laws governing penicillin.
Scarce amounts of penicillin that he should have been devoting to chemical synthesis John L was instead giving to doctors (under the table) to save the lives of people dying of SBE, a traditionally always-fatal form of endocarditis.
John L was also busy backstopping his own private bet that he could produce billions of units of NATURALLY-brewed by the April 1944 deadline.
He did this by having his crew work night and day under powerful Klieg Lights with posters reminding his employees that every delay would cost lives.
And he did this be accepting the second-best as more than good enough : he didn't build a brand new shiny factory like all his competitors were doing.
He took over a ice making plant (a sort of milk plant, in many senses) and adapted it quickly to produce deep tank penicillin.
Coghill and the other synthesis believers were working just as quickly, in labs all over America and Britain, fueled by lots of taxpayers' money.
But the work was not going anywhere useful.
Meanwhile Pfizer was now producing more penicillin than even their wildest estimates had allowed for and Coghill threw in the towel and, being a good bureaucrat, moved smartly to Plan B.
In April 1944, with the biological production of penicillin an outstanding success, it was suddenly deemed to no longer be a deep military secret and Coghill spilled all the details in public - claiming his division was responsible for its success.
In a sense that was true - his low level employees had made natural penicillin possible - but Coghill himself,had been busy trying to screw them in the ear by creating synthetic penicillin to make all their work irrelevant.
More importantly, if biological penicillin was now a big success, shouldn't that mean that it was MORE of a military secret than ever - not less?
Was it really only kept secret so that synthetic penicillin could gain time to trump it ?
In May 1944, Coghill ( in his other role as the erstwhile head of the Fermentation Division ) had to go inspect the fermentation tanks at Pfizer and see vials of 100,000 units of penicillin come off the Pfizer line faster than he could count.
And Coghill the Chemist had to stand there while Pfizer's Biologists went about with shit-eating grins.
A GREEN Day indeed.
Chemists and Chemistry, the Queen of the Sciences from 1840s to the 1940s, received a blow that day that they never really recovered from.
I'd give anything to be there, the day that Modernity died and Post Modernity was born....
" Bet the farm on it ! "
That was a mighty good deadline for synthetic penicillin true believers to aim for .
Because April 1944 was about the last possible date for any sort of penicillin to enter the US Army supply pipeline, be transported to the Kansas City Kansas central army medical supply depot and then be shipped all the way back again to the East Coast and shipped
across the Atlantic to the Southern England ports, to be loaded on hospital ships bound for D-Day's beaches.
If this chemist (Robert D Coghill) had been proven right, he would have put his own Division out of business - so he had a conflict of interest about a mile wide and mile deep.
A conflict of interest between his natural chemist's fetish to achieve the complete synthesis of anything and everything and the duty he owned to his employers at the Agriculture Department.
But across town, another chemically-oriented key mover and shaker, was having a change of heart.
John L (John Lawrence Smith, the head of Pfizer) was leading one of the firms heavily involved in synthesising penicillin.
But moved by the plight of a child so like his own daughter that he had earlier lost to meningitis, he was secretly breaking the spirit of the wartime laws governing penicillin.
Scarce amounts of penicillin that he should have been devoting to chemical synthesis John L was instead giving to doctors (under the table) to save the lives of people dying of SBE, a traditionally always-fatal form of endocarditis.
John L was also busy backstopping his own private bet that he could produce billions of units of NATURALLY-brewed by the April 1944 deadline.
He did this by having his crew work night and day under powerful Klieg Lights with posters reminding his employees that every delay would cost lives.
And he did this be accepting the second-best as more than good enough : he didn't build a brand new shiny factory like all his competitors were doing.
He took over a ice making plant (a sort of milk plant, in many senses) and adapted it quickly to produce deep tank penicillin.
Coghill and the other synthesis believers were working just as quickly, in labs all over America and Britain, fueled by lots of taxpayers' money.
But the work was not going anywhere useful.
Meanwhile Pfizer was now producing more penicillin than even their wildest estimates had allowed for and Coghill threw in the towel and, being a good bureaucrat, moved smartly to Plan B.
In April 1944, with the biological production of penicillin an outstanding success, it was suddenly deemed to no longer be a deep military secret and Coghill spilled all the details in public - claiming his division was responsible for its success.
In a sense that was true - his low level employees had made natural penicillin possible - but Coghill himself,had been busy trying to screw them in the ear by creating synthetic penicillin to make all their work irrelevant.
More importantly, if biological penicillin was now a big success, shouldn't that mean that it was MORE of a military secret than ever - not less?
Was it really only kept secret so that synthetic penicillin could gain time to trump it ?
In May 1944, Coghill ( in his other role as the erstwhile head of the Fermentation Division ) had to go inspect the fermentation tanks at Pfizer and see vials of 100,000 units of penicillin come off the Pfizer line faster than he could count.
And Coghill the Chemist had to stand there while Pfizer's Biologists went about with shit-eating grins.
A GREEN Day indeed.
Chemists and Chemistry, the Queen of the Sciences from 1840s to the 1940s, received a blow that day that they never really recovered from.
I'd give anything to be there, the day that Modernity died and Post Modernity was born....
Monday, August 9, 2010
The NEEDLE that wasn't there....
.... changed History.
In the early 1940s ,a parent was bemoaning to a doctor that by the time he got his sick child to the New London hospital from his summer home in Stonington Connecticut a few miles away, the doctors told him it was too late and his sixteen year old daughter Mary Louise was dead from spinal meningitis.
The doctor lectured him, as was his want, that if every GP carried a needle and some penicillin G in their black bag and gave it to every suspected case of meningitis, without waiting to get the patient to hospital to have their spinal fluid tapped and typed, no child ever need die from meningitis.
But unfortunately, the doctor went on to say, drug company executives are still too slow off the mark and GPs have no penicillin to put into their bags, 15 years after its discovery....shooting a meaningful glance at the parent.
The parent went home and thought about it a while ---- God he hated that guy - always wanting more and always giving you a lecture instead of thanks for whatever you could give him ------- but he did think about it and probably even talked it over with his wife.
Who knows what happened that night. Did he tell his wife," I'd like to help Henry but you know me, I don't like to move quickly."
And perhaps his wife said softly, "I know" and then immediately wished she had never said it.
Perhaps they always agreed to never again talk about that awful night so long ago.
Who knows ?
What we do know, is that something totally unexpected happened, thanks to that parent.
True he was notoriously known as a very frugal and cautious man, but now that he actually decided to ' do something about it' , he worked like a whirling dervish.
His name was John Lawrence Smith and if you know his name at all, you know him as one of the owners of the famed Brooklyn Dodgers.
During June 1944, the Brooklyn Dodgers had one terrible road trip after another.
But John L's other Brooklyn team scored one knockout after another that June in 1944, in places like Omaha ............ Utah ...... Juno ...... Silver........ and Gold.
This is the true story of " How Omaha Got Its 'P' " - and the doctor's advice is still good today - doctors are still advised to carry and use a needleful of Pen G on every suspected case of meningitis, ASAP, if they want to save a life.
If your child's life has been saved by a prompt needleful of Penicillin G, aka benzylpenicillin , offer up thanks to that parent.
(John L Smith ,the head of Pfizer, when it produced most of the penicillin that landed on the D-Day beaches - British and Canadian beaches as well as the American ones.)
And of course to that ever nagging doctor ,Martin Henry Dawson...
In the early 1940s ,a parent was bemoaning to a doctor that by the time he got his sick child to the New London hospital from his summer home in Stonington Connecticut a few miles away, the doctors told him it was too late and his sixteen year old daughter Mary Louise was dead from spinal meningitis.
The doctor lectured him, as was his want, that if every GP carried a needle and some penicillin G in their black bag and gave it to every suspected case of meningitis, without waiting to get the patient to hospital to have their spinal fluid tapped and typed, no child ever need die from meningitis.
But unfortunately, the doctor went on to say, drug company executives are still too slow off the mark and GPs have no penicillin to put into their bags, 15 years after its discovery....shooting a meaningful glance at the parent.
The parent went home and thought about it a while ---- God he hated that guy - always wanting more and always giving you a lecture instead of thanks for whatever you could give him ------- but he did think about it and probably even talked it over with his wife.
Who knows what happened that night. Did he tell his wife," I'd like to help Henry but you know me, I don't like to move quickly."
And perhaps his wife said softly, "I know" and then immediately wished she had never said it.
Perhaps they always agreed to never again talk about that awful night so long ago.
Who knows ?
What we do know, is that something totally unexpected happened, thanks to that parent.
True he was notoriously known as a very frugal and cautious man, but now that he actually decided to ' do something about it' , he worked like a whirling dervish.
His name was John Lawrence Smith and if you know his name at all, you know him as one of the owners of the famed Brooklyn Dodgers.
During June 1944, the Brooklyn Dodgers had one terrible road trip after another.
But John L's other Brooklyn team scored one knockout after another that June in 1944, in places like Omaha ............ Utah ...... Juno ...... Silver........ and Gold.
This is the true story of " How Omaha Got Its 'P' " - and the doctor's advice is still good today - doctors are still advised to carry and use a needleful of Pen G on every suspected case of meningitis, ASAP, if they want to save a life.
If your child's life has been saved by a prompt needleful of Penicillin G, aka benzylpenicillin , offer up thanks to that parent.
(John L Smith ,the head of Pfizer, when it produced most of the penicillin that landed on the D-Day beaches - British and Canadian beaches as well as the American ones.)
And of course to that ever nagging doctor ,Martin Henry Dawson...
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