Many of the patients with invariably fatal subacute bacterial endocarditis who were treated with penicillin in those early pioneering war years were housewives in their child-bearing years or were children.
These occupations, by themselves, don't give us much hint of their social status and family income.
But we do get hints here and there of the typical jobs of the employed adults among the group.
Of Leo Loewe's first patients the adults were all soon back at work (not for them the well-to-do person's luxury of an extended rest) as a retail salesman, a waiter, a secretary and a machine operator.
Martin Henry Dawson had a young black teenager aged 17 pulled out of the jaws of death who went back to her job - no luxury of either rest or more schooling for her.
If I have identified Charles Aronson right, he was from a family of clothing factory piece work workers , while he himself was a machine operator at a newspaper.
None of the dozen or so SBE Penicillin patients I have names for have much profile - suggesting they were ordinary people.
Most seem to be Jewish and from the Russian Empire's Pale (Poland and Belarus/Ukraine). In 1940, very few of this large and recent immigrant group were very prominent or socially secure.
Unlike polio, none of the scientific-medical elite were likely to know SBE victims as friends or relatives.
Hence their willingness to see the SBEs die from being denied penicillin ...
These occupations, by themselves, don't give us much hint of their social status and family income.
But we do get hints here and there of the typical jobs of the employed adults among the group.
Of Leo Loewe's first patients the adults were all soon back at work (not for them the well-to-do person's luxury of an extended rest) as a retail salesman, a waiter, a secretary and a machine operator.
Martin Henry Dawson had a young black teenager aged 17 pulled out of the jaws of death who went back to her job - no luxury of either rest or more schooling for her.
If I have identified Charles Aronson right, he was from a family of clothing factory piece work workers , while he himself was a machine operator at a newspaper.
None of the dozen or so SBE Penicillin patients I have names for have much profile - suggesting they were ordinary people.
Most seem to be Jewish and from the Russian Empire's Pale (Poland and Belarus/Ukraine). In 1940, very few of this large and recent immigrant group were very prominent or socially secure.
Unlike polio, none of the scientific-medical elite were likely to know SBE victims as friends or relatives.
Hence their willingness to see the SBEs die from being denied penicillin ...
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