Why Charlie ? Why Miss "H" ?

Between September 1940 and April 1945, pioneering penicillin doctor Martin Henry Dawson treated about three dozen patients with subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE) or acute bacterial endocarditis (ABE).

So out of those three dozen patients , why on earth did I decide to focus on just two - one young man (Charles Aronson) and one young woman (Miss H H) ?

One reason was to simply add continuity and coherence to my narrative, particularly my libretto narrative.

Charlie was there, on-site, in Dawson's ward at the very beginning and at the very end of the narrative arc - something you just invent in a work of fiction but something you rarely find in real life.

(Charlie had the extremely rare good luck to survive his first bout of SBE and the extremely bad luck to get a second bout of SBE and then to survive a severe stroke while recovering from that second bout .)

The arrival of Miss "H" provoked the crucial turning point in the narrative arc and her prolonged recovery from the side effects of her SBE ensured she was in many scenes - including the climatic one , along with Charlie.

Again a real life boon rarely granted the author of narrative non-fiction !

But my main reason for including these two in Dawson's team of seven key 'unfits' is because I sense these two , out of all the three dozen patients, were more 'actors' than 'acted upon' (which is the normal role for patients in such doctor-oriented stories).

The first period of extensive penicillium growing and penicillin extraction was originally planned to occur at the end of the first term (December) at Dawson and co-team leader Meyer's medical school.

But Dawson suddenly decided to give the first (tiny) historic injections of penicillin just 5 weeks into the 16 week process - seemingly right after Charlie unexpectedly joined the team's first SBE patient, Aaron Alston.

Dawson did write Ernst Chain at that time that he had a patient of whom he was unusually interested in - and admittedly that could have been either Aaron or Charlie.

But Charlie, he later noted, had an unusually complicated medical history - all revolving around surviving repeated brushes of death with oral commensal strep.

And nothing in life - nothing - interested Dawson more than oral commensal strep .

And Charlie was a repeated 'survivor' , probably with the characteristic survivor's buoyancy.

This alone might have inspired Dawson onward to also do his very best.

Much the same for Miss "H" - after all, for her, the very honest and modest Dawson 'stole' incredibly scarce government-controlled penicillin in the middle of an all-out Total War  !

Her earlier medical history indicated she had survived a life-threatening bout of Rheumatic Fever with 'endocarditis' involvement (probably actually severe pancarditis) .

 She went on to survive her SBE thanks to Dawson's penicillin (the first case in history ever cured by penicillin) and then to endure years of serious infections caused by infected matter from her damaged heart valve infecting other parts of her body - she lost one eye and her womb in the process.

But like Charlie, she survived them all - she was a born survivor , probably with a similar characteristic buoyancy.

So : two real-life 'larger-than-life' characters just crying out to be portrayed on stage by first class actors yearning to stretch their craft .

What's there not to like ???!!!!

"Unfit valour" : They defied Allied & Axis eugenics (and their own physical failings) to bring us "Penicillin-for-All"

What would penicillin look like today if Hitler, Stalin or Churchill had delivered it - instead of Dawson ?

In 1943 , Hitler, Stalin or Anglo-American Big Pharma could have delivered penicillin to us - delivered us penicillin either as expensive as Avastin or only to be given to the truly deserving Proletarian or Aryan.

But against the eugenic-mad world of 1943 , perhaps only a bunch of misfits and unfits could have delivered us inexpensive, abundant ,un-patented, un-encumbered Penicillin-for-All...