I have often wondered about why Martin Henry Dawson's legacy was so quickly - and quietly - 'disappeared' after his early death.
I mean Penicillin was very big news, Rheumatic Heart Disease remained the leading killer and crippler of school age kids (well above the numbers affected by polio), DNA was becoming big news.
I think one explanation was that many of his contemporary fellow doctors and scientists felt that he had 'let down the side' or 'gone native' when he 'went Po' and tried so hard to save the lives of people that many of them considered unworthy of much medical attention at the height of Total War.
I think Dawson would argue - but only if he was forced to argue, with a gun at his head ! - that the whole point of that Total War, the whole point of the quarrel with our Japanese and German cousins, really revolved around the question 'were all lives worth saving, or only some ?'
He was sure which side the Axis was on, he thought that the Allies were on the other.
Publicly, they were - they just didn't mean to see it carried out in practise.
When Dawson did so, he exposed their inconsistencies : talk versus walk.
No one ever honors someone who reveals them to be hypocrites.....
@MichaelMarshallMogoesPo
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