Forget the famous February 1941 story of a poor policeman dying from the scratch of a rose.
Its bull - bullfeathers.
Totally bogus - at least as a founding legend of penicillin.
You know the one, where our policeman dies, despite the desperate attempts to save his life with the 'first ever' needles of penicillin by an Australian born doctor named Florey.
Dig deeper and there is lots about that story to question - but that's for another day.
Today we are to celebrate , not to criticize.
The "first ever" use of an antibiotic by needle to save a human life actually happened months earlier and an ocean away and that needle was given by a Canadian-born doctor named Martin Henry Dawson.
Most importantly, that first ever patient, a 27 year old youth named Charles Aronson, walked away from his deathbed !
(Charlie was suffering from an invariably fatal disease called SBE, the final stage of Rheumatic Fever).
The amount of penicillin given to him was far far far too small to kill his biofilmic bacteria around his heart valves ---- but it might have affected his heart greatly nevertheless : his emotional heart.
It lifted his morale and that way enough for this boy with a cat-like nine lives when it came to Strep bacteria attacks.
When last contacted in early 1946, Charlie was still alive, still here !
Truro, Nova Scotia ( Dawson's hometown) take a bow .....your boy did us all proud....
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