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)

MedStudents Save Lives Sitting On Ass

If you think Columbia university medical students do good work on their feet, consider this:

Seventy years ago this Fall, they did some of their best life-saving work, while sitting on their buns and probably nodding off !

It happened this way:

Dr Dawson's Manhattan Pilot project to grow 700 2-litre flasks worth of penicillium medium required a lot of permanent space; permanent space his practical and commonsensical bosses were unwilling to allocate to him.

Eventually he found if he put the flasks under the seats at Columbia P&S's famous teaching amphitheatre , the butts of the (mostly male) med students would provide enough heat to allow the penicillium mold to "hatch".

The thought of  all those highly competitive, testosterone-driven studmuffins acting as brood hens , to birth the Era of Antibiotics seems an unlikely tale - but as in much of the Dawson saga, its all true....

"PHOTO OF MARTIN HENRY DAWSON"