Memo to RAMZI YOUSEF : Wartime Manhattan gave the world's first penicillin shots --- as well as the world's first A-bomb

Manhattan's first ever penicillin shots (75 years ago next  October 16th 2015) were a deliberate act of provocation by Dr Martin Henry Dawson.

Penicillin shots across the bow against the Allied medical establishment for using the excuse of war medicine preparation to dismiss efforts of social medicine directed at the poor and minorities.

He felt that penicillin should be deliberately given a high enough wartime production priority to be able to give penicillin to all those in wartime dying from lack of it .

This would serve as a very public rebuttal to the Axis who felt only the 'fit' from the 'fittest' nations deserved medicine, food and indeed life itself.

Emma Lazarus's message to immigrants : America , if it is about anything , is ALL about second acts ...

F Scott Fitzgerald got it wrong. Not about everything , of course. But the bit about there being 'no second acts in American lives' - that 24/7 bromide of the modern news and entertainment biz.

As Emma Lazarus's own legacy demonstrates , there is plenty of room in America for second and even third acts.

Not really a surprise to readers of the New Testament I suppose.

Or to tens of millions of born again Americans (or to the many fans of Richard M Nixon) .

Lazarus arising 

Emma was actually quite an internationally prominent poet and social activist in her day.

Charlie and Miss "H" : these Lazruses of Manhattan defied the odds time and again to offer hope to a war-weary world

"Dead Men Waiting" or "Dead Women Waiting" is the way most staff in hospital regarded the the  patients in the Green Wards where earlier Rheumatic Fever sufferers with green strep in their heart valves waited out their turn to die.

Dr Martin Henry Dawson was determined that his hand-grown penicillin could help them to beat those odds and return these lazaruses to health , to give them a fair crack at enjoying their three score and ten here on Earth.

His struggle - partly against the disease , mostly against his own colleagues and wartime  government - cost him his own life , but in the end he succeeded against all measure of imagining , improving not just the future of the SBEs but of the entire world itself ....