On Oct 16th 1940, Gotham's concrete jungle rescued the NATURAL penicillin stone its (British) builders had rejected and gave the world's first antibiotic shot. Alexander Fleming's ARTIFICIAL penicillin (ironically from leafy green Oxford !) won a Nobel but failed morally and technically. Instead Manhattan Natural radiated hope to a world tired, huddled and wretched. On its 75th, let's remind terrorist Ramzi Yousef about a Manhattan project that saved far more lives than the A-Bomb ever killed.
Jul 12, 2010
That lowdown achin' old heart disease
This is the story of a heart disease, a metaphorical heart disease, the worst disease our world has ever seen and - hopefully - will ever see ; but one where the nominal 'patients' ended up healing the doctors.
It is also part of the perennial story of New York City , the battle between the Skyscrapers and the Sidewalkers, as old as the city itself.
It is the story of a medical pariah, a promising doctor who to most of his colleagues seemed to have gone off the rails somewhere and done about the worst thing a medical scientist could ever do, which is to 'go native'.
A doctor who started thinking and acting less like a Disinterested Scientist and more like he was at one with his erstwhile 'clinicial material'...
Much of the climax of this story takes place in north western Harlem, over a small area of about eighty acres.
And like all the best eighty acres, it also had a mule. His name : Martin Henry Dawson.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment