'There's just something about a Mercury ' : how the potential of a young black man kickstarted penicillin and has benefitted ten billion of us ever since

Can we still - 75 years on - get some sense of the personality of the very first person in history to get an antibiotics injection ?

Fortunately , yes.

But why then should we even care ?

Because, children , just because.

Because the normally reserved doctor who kickstarted natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all (the medical approach that has benefited about ten billion of us since 1940) personally wrote and told Nobel winning Ernst Chain that this patient's personality and potential had directly inspired him to take up his penicillin crusade.

When the personality of a young black man inspired medicine's biggest ever paradigm shift, an event that saved my life and that of many in my family, of course I want to know all I can about this wonderful person.

And if you have ever had a family member saved by antibiotics and if you have even an ounce of gratitude within you, so should you.

So here is a long "letter to the editor" that A. (Aaron) Leroy Alston wrote , addressed to the black-oriented New York Age newspaper in early April 1939.

That is just 18 months before he received that historic first ever needle.

And it allows us to learn something of the patient who inspired a doctor to change our whole world for the better , forever .

Words of first patient in history to get an antibiotics injection

Aaron, a young black man with a high school graduation certificate , held a good day job in an insurance company at the height of the Great Depression.

This is quite impressive because the Depression was a tragic event for most Americans but certainly hit black Harlem extra extra hard.

He was also a winning track star who then founded the Mercury Athletic Club.

The club, with him as coach, manager, pr rep and fundraiser , focused on seeing that Harlem's black female runners finally got a chance to compete in the big races.

They did very well, as he says in this letter to the editor - for the first time black girls were being judged as the best runners in America in various categories.

Who knows what further good young Aaron might have done if only Alexander Fleming had tried harder, earlier, to see to it that penicillin become a real lifesaver.

True, (Martin) Henry Dawson in October 1940 did kickstart the process to make penicillin into a cheap abundant lifesaver that was available to all .

But though Dawson was inspired to do so by seeing all of young Alston's great potential going with him if he should die,  Dawson had made too little penicillin - at that time - to save Aaron.

So young Aaron died. But he was not a victim or a loser.

He had already done a lot.

And I sincerely believe that for all the good he might have gone on to do over a long life, if he hadn't contracted invariably fatal SBE endocarditis, it would never have matched what he did do as a dying patient.

For when his buoyant-personality-in-the-face-of-imminent-death met a doctor looking for a way to help retain social values in the middle of a big war, our whole world started to change for the better.

Who among us - including the fictional trio of Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm - can claim that great honour ?