After enrolling in a four year BA at Dalhousie University in the Fall of 1913, Martin Henry Dawson joined the Great War in the Fall of 1915 - and yet he graduated* with a BA granted in absentia in the Spring of 1916.
Martin Henry's selection of courses at Dal hadn't exhibited any inclination to a career in science or medicine - he had taken only the required basic chemistry class and one elective in basic biology.
He did have very good Maths, German and Latin which (albeit indirectly) would only help a future would be med student.
In his first two years at Dal (his only two years at Dal), he naturally couldn't have taken too many electives or advanced level courses.
The only elective he took two courses in - and one at the highest level (6) that he got to, before war called, was --- wait for it ----- philosophy !
Could it be that a career as a philosopher and a thinker lay before him ?
Interestingly, his marks were unusual poor in these philosophy courses - why he continued to take them then is an interesting mystery.
(On a personal note, my father was also embarked on a career as a philosopher before the Korean War suddenly called - he didn't resume that career until a decade later.)
In the Fall of 1919, Dawson enters McGill's med program.
By the time of the 1920-1921 calendar, he is indicated as a third year student in medicine - which would seem remarkable progress for someone with half a BA and with very little science.
It is true he was smart and hardworking.
And he was a genuine young hero to the grateful adults running McGill : winning an MC with citation for bravery during the war.
Perhaps more importantly he had spent a year at a very busy wartime base hospital as a private/orderly and his two wartime wounds had also meant he had spent two years in and out of hospitals and convalescent homes and before endless medical boards.
Dawson had gotten his medical acculturation, like most everything he ever got in life , 'the hard way' ....
+++++
*His older brother Howard has also entered Dalhousie the same year and at the same academic level as Martin Henry.
But despite finishing a good deal more courses than Martin (Howard had enrolled both in first year pre-Engineering and then first year pre Law) never got his BA when he left for the war about the same time.
Howard died fighting for his country's and university's values in that war.
Not granting him a BA before he went was really a small-minded mistake.
It could still be rectified by Dal, as we mark both one hundred years since the Great War and the 200th anniversary of the university itself...
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Monday, January 21, 2013
Science's faith-based belief in the non-toxicity of pure natural Penicillin
For an entire generation of scientists, doctors and science reporters (those working between 1929 and 1949), it was an article of absolute faith that pure penicillin was non-toxic.
But how did they know? How in the hell did they know ?
For during most of those years they had never seen anything like pure penicillin , let alone given it an extensive work-out down in the hospital wards.
When the ward doctors finally got their hands on lots of crystal clear 100% pure factory-made penicillin , a not-so-funny thing happened.
Some of the patients got the rigours and the shakes, as some patients had always done on receiving earlier "crude penicillin", but these shakes ended in their sudden and dramatic death from severe anaphylactic shock.
The earlier generation of penicillin researchers (with an extremely tiny handful of exceptions) seemed to stuff logic and reason in the kester, whenever they discussed crude penicillin's non-toxicity.
The evidence before their eyes was clear.
It said, repeatedly, that a crude mixture of one part natural penicillin to thirty thousand parts of its natural impurities and nine hundred and seventy thousand parts water was basically non-toxic, causing only minor and temporary temperature rises when injected into animals (or slightly modified, into humans).
But the mental conclusion they always drew from these visible facts, was logically unwarranted to the max times infinity.
They said - consistently - for twenty years - that pure natural penicillin was extremely non-toxic (it just had to be !) and that the natural impurities were the cause of any fever caused upon injection (it just had to be !)
A undergraduate course in Philosophic Logic would suggest that these researchers and science reporters had totally confounded non-toxicity with purity.
Because a logics professor like Rowland C Marshall would remind his students that a moment's reflection should suggest that pure poison is more , not less, toxic than less pure poison : non-toxicity and purity share no relationship.
There are in fact only three possible correct answers in this particular pop quiz :
(A ) The impurities are the sole cause of the temporary allergic fever. (B) The penicillin is the sole cause of the allergic fever. (C) Both can be the cause, varying on the particular set of circumstances and genetic nature of the patients involved.
The truth is, there was no way of knowing, at that time, what was the real cause for this minor temporary fever spike --- particularly after administrating only weak doses of crude mixture 'penicillin'.
A much better test would come when a much stronger doses of pure penicillin were administered and we could see then if strong and pure penicillin doses alone can cause allergic shock or not.
But even that might not convince anybody who felt it just had to be some incredibly tiny fragment from the original natural fermentation process that somehow slipped into 100% pure penicillin and that was the true cause of the allergy.
(A big shout out to Dr Gordon Stewart who pursued this line of thinking, in the true bull-headed cum Sir Robert Robinson fashion.)
Why not, said American chemist John Sheehan, why not wait ?
Why not wait to test an extremely pure dose of synthetic penicillin, which had never ever been near a natural fermentation process, to test it for possible allergy shocks ?
He did so - and finally found that pure chemically synthesized penicillin indeed could still cause allergic reactions in some people.
In the end, it turned out that answer (C) was the correct one , but that with weak doses of penicillin administered fairly slowly, the reaction does not appear to have killed anyone.
At least not before1946 and the issuing of abundant amounts of pure penicillin for use in non-hospital settings.
This twenty year bugaboo about crudity equalling , ipso facto , toxicity was a pure intellectual red herring.
It not only fooled the generation of idiots who uttered it, it was also the major reason why a whole holocaust of patients died needlessly for 15 years while researchers sought to purify a life-saver that already worked perfectly well in a crude mixture.
To his undying credit, Henry Dawson realized how absurd this thinking was in October 1940 when he said " let's just do it".
He then slipped a needle-full of a crude mixture of natural penicillin and its natural impurities into a patient, confident that the crude mixture would only cause a minor and temporary temperature rise at worst.
His sense of charity and chivalry was admirable, but in this particular case, I would argue his Scottish sense of logic and reason were rarer and more admirable still.....
But how did they know? How in the hell did they know ?
For during most of those years they had never seen anything like pure penicillin , let alone given it an extensive work-out down in the hospital wards.
When the ward doctors finally got their hands on lots of crystal clear 100% pure factory-made penicillin , a not-so-funny thing happened.
Some of the patients got the rigours and the shakes, as some patients had always done on receiving earlier "crude penicillin", but these shakes ended in their sudden and dramatic death from severe anaphylactic shock.
The earlier generation of penicillin researchers (with an extremely tiny handful of exceptions) seemed to stuff logic and reason in the kester, whenever they discussed crude penicillin's non-toxicity.
The evidence before their eyes was clear.
It said, repeatedly, that a crude mixture of one part natural penicillin to thirty thousand parts of its natural impurities and nine hundred and seventy thousand parts water was basically non-toxic, causing only minor and temporary temperature rises when injected into animals (or slightly modified, into humans).
But the mental conclusion they always drew from these visible facts, was logically unwarranted to the max times infinity.
They said - consistently - for twenty years - that pure natural penicillin was extremely non-toxic (it just had to be !) and that the natural impurities were the cause of any fever caused upon injection (it just had to be !)
A lack of undergraduate level logic caused a holocaust of needless deaths
A undergraduate course in Philosophic Logic would suggest that these researchers and science reporters had totally confounded non-toxicity with purity.
Because a logics professor like Rowland C Marshall would remind his students that a moment's reflection should suggest that pure poison is more , not less, toxic than less pure poison : non-toxicity and purity share no relationship.
There are in fact only three possible correct answers in this particular pop quiz :
(A ) The impurities are the sole cause of the temporary allergic fever. (B) The penicillin is the sole cause of the allergic fever. (C) Both can be the cause, varying on the particular set of circumstances and genetic nature of the patients involved.
The truth is, there was no way of knowing, at that time, what was the real cause for this minor temporary fever spike --- particularly after administrating only weak doses of crude mixture 'penicillin'.
A much better test would come when a much stronger doses of pure penicillin were administered and we could see then if strong and pure penicillin doses alone can cause allergic shock or not.
But even that might not convince anybody who felt it just had to be some incredibly tiny fragment from the original natural fermentation process that somehow slipped into 100% pure penicillin and that was the true cause of the allergy.
(A big shout out to Dr Gordon Stewart who pursued this line of thinking, in the true bull-headed cum Sir Robert Robinson fashion.)
Why not, said American chemist John Sheehan, why not wait ?
Why not wait to test an extremely pure dose of synthetic penicillin, which had never ever been near a natural fermentation process, to test it for possible allergy shocks ?
He did so - and finally found that pure chemically synthesized penicillin indeed could still cause allergic reactions in some people.
In the end, it turned out that answer (C) was the correct one , but that with weak doses of penicillin administered fairly slowly, the reaction does not appear to have killed anyone.
At least not before1946 and the issuing of abundant amounts of pure penicillin for use in non-hospital settings.
This twenty year bugaboo about crudity equalling , ipso facto , toxicity was a pure intellectual red herring.
It not only fooled the generation of idiots who uttered it, it was also the major reason why a whole holocaust of patients died needlessly for 15 years while researchers sought to purify a life-saver that already worked perfectly well in a crude mixture.
To his undying credit, Henry Dawson realized how absurd this thinking was in October 1940 when he said " let's just do it".
He then slipped a needle-full of a crude mixture of natural penicillin and its natural impurities into a patient, confident that the crude mixture would only cause a minor and temporary temperature rise at worst.
His sense of charity and chivalry was admirable, but in this particular case, I would argue his Scottish sense of logic and reason were rarer and more admirable still.....
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