Instead, he ventured that history has a single purpose and a single goal - together with a linear unbreakable path upwards to that goal - linear, unidirectional "Progress" with a capital "P".
Thursday, August 22, 2013
In moral terms, WWII boils down to one simple - scientific - question : are the small a part of the future, or just of the past ?
G F Hegel, the 19th century's most influential philosopher, was famous for claiming that history wasn't an endless cycles of birth, maturity and death laced with infinite variations , as people had always observed.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
War medicine was from Mars, Social medicine from Venus ?
The very word "war" medicine seems to stir something vaguely Mars-like, deep within the soul of the chickenhawk doctor or scientist.
Successfully conceiving ,in an academic lab at the University of Chicago, a way to reduce combat deaths from shock seems to transport one almost up to the frontline evacuation hospitals, directly under hostile fire.
Being there, doing it, roughing it , all sweaty and virile-like : medical science with the smell of the locker room and the men's shower stall about it.
By contrast, what can any doctor - any real doctor - actually do about those dying of subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE) ?
These hopeless cases shouldn't even be occupying an acute hospital bed - particularly in wartime.
They should be handled by women - nurses - in a secondary hospice or in a palliative care situation at home.
And arthritis 'care' - not really medicine is it ? Helping impoverished old ladies too frail to bend over properly to get dressed and to do their toiletry.
Again - women's work. A job for personal care assistants and social work case workers. Social medicine.
But (Martin) Henry Dawson persevered , hung on in there , all through the war, treating those chronically ill with arthritis and the very 4Fs of the 4Fs, those dying of SBE .
Perhaps because he was that rarity : an American medical researcher in 1940 who already had a stirling war record in the front lines (in the medical corp, infantry and artillery), with a medal for valour and two serious war wounds to back him up.
The Military Cross winner from Venus, as it were ......
Successfully conceiving ,in an academic lab at the University of Chicago, a way to reduce combat deaths from shock seems to transport one almost up to the frontline evacuation hospitals, directly under hostile fire.
Being there, doing it, roughing it , all sweaty and virile-like : medical science with the smell of the locker room and the men's shower stall about it.
By contrast, what can any doctor - any real doctor - actually do about those dying of subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE) ?
These hopeless cases shouldn't even be occupying an acute hospital bed - particularly in wartime.
They should be handled by women - nurses - in a secondary hospice or in a palliative care situation at home.
And arthritis 'care' - not really medicine is it ? Helping impoverished old ladies too frail to bend over properly to get dressed and to do their toiletry.
Again - women's work. A job for personal care assistants and social work case workers. Social medicine.
But (Martin) Henry Dawson persevered , hung on in there , all through the war, treating those chronically ill with arthritis and the very 4Fs of the 4Fs, those dying of SBE .
Perhaps because he was that rarity : an American medical researcher in 1940 who already had a stirling war record in the front lines (in the medical corp, infantry and artillery), with a medal for valour and two serious war wounds to back him up.
The Military Cross winner from Venus, as it were ......
the Good , as well as the Bad , gets intensified under the pressures of wartime
In her time - during and after WWI - nurse Edith Cavell was as famous as Oscar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg and all the other WWII "Righteous Among the Nations" combined.
She devoted her life to nursing, mostly in Belgium though she was British herself, and didn't see why WWI should interrupt her practise of trying to save all patients, regardless of whether they were German, Belgian or Allied.
She was shoot however , by a German firing squad, for the war crime of helping Allied soldiers to escape the brutal German occupation forces enslaving Belgium.
Britain has claimed it had gone to war precisely to defend the right of neutral little Belgium not to be over run and then brutally enslaved by her bigger neighbours.
But many in her political and military elite thought it was right and just for the Germans to shoot her - they would have done the same - in fact did the same to Mata Hari.
World public opinion decidedly thought otherwise and her death became a big factor in turning neutral America to the Allied cause and for inspiring tens of thousands of youth in all the Allied countries to immediately join up as medical workers or soldiers.
News of her execution hit North American newspaper readers October 16th 1915.
It immediately inspired Martin Henry Dawson to become a medical orderly oversea.
He subsequently changed his life career plans and became a doctor.
On October 16th 1940, exactly 25 years later to the day he entered the medical world, Dawson ushered in one of those sort of earth-shaking events that only happens once every few centuries.
He gave two dying young men some of that elixir of life, natural penicillin, and so began our present Age of Antibiotics.
Neither man was Belgian, but for Dawson the principal was still the same : the small were being crushed beneath the interests of the big and he was as determined to fight that outrage as hard in WWII as he had in WWI.
These two men were being neglected by a medical community and drug company industry that had become focused on profitably war medicine for the 1As of the world , not on 'socialistic' social medicine to aid the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Dawson saw that solely a military effort to defeat the Nazis or the Huns was never going to be enough, not if there was no moral battle behind it.
Sinking to the level of the Prussian military mindset, in WWI London or in WWII New York he saw was no way to win the hearts and minds of neutral nations - or even for retaining the loyalty of one's own citizens.
So, no Dawson did not go forth into battle on behalf of Mars in this second world war as he had eventually in the first.
He stayed home and treated only people too '4F' to ever be useful for military duty or even for the fast pace and long hours of munitions factory work.
He worked on the Venus side of Manhattan exclusively and his direct war impact was limited to filling the hearts of people all over the world with renewed hope.
But i believe that his efforts saved far more lives ,and probably won the war quicker, than The Bomb ever did.....
She devoted her life to nursing, mostly in Belgium though she was British herself, and didn't see why WWI should interrupt her practise of trying to save all patients, regardless of whether they were German, Belgian or Allied.
She was shoot however , by a German firing squad, for the war crime of helping Allied soldiers to escape the brutal German occupation forces enslaving Belgium.
Britain has claimed it had gone to war precisely to defend the right of neutral little Belgium not to be over run and then brutally enslaved by her bigger neighbours.
But many in her political and military elite thought it was right and just for the Germans to shoot her - they would have done the same - in fact did the same to Mata Hari.
World public opinion decidedly thought otherwise and her death became a big factor in turning neutral America to the Allied cause and for inspiring tens of thousands of youth in all the Allied countries to immediately join up as medical workers or soldiers.
News of her execution hit North American newspaper readers October 16th 1915.
It immediately inspired Martin Henry Dawson to become a medical orderly oversea.
He subsequently changed his life career plans and became a doctor.
On October 16th 1940, exactly 25 years later to the day he entered the medical world, Dawson ushered in one of those sort of earth-shaking events that only happens once every few centuries.
He gave two dying young men some of that elixir of life, natural penicillin, and so began our present Age of Antibiotics.
Neither man was Belgian, but for Dawson the principal was still the same : the small were being crushed beneath the interests of the big and he was as determined to fight that outrage as hard in WWII as he had in WWI.
These two men were being neglected by a medical community and drug company industry that had become focused on profitably war medicine for the 1As of the world , not on 'socialistic' social medicine to aid the 4Fs of the 4Fs.
Dawson saw that solely a military effort to defeat the Nazis or the Huns was never going to be enough, not if there was no moral battle behind it.
Sinking to the level of the Prussian military mindset, in WWI London or in WWII New York he saw was no way to win the hearts and minds of neutral nations - or even for retaining the loyalty of one's own citizens.
So, no Dawson did not go forth into battle on behalf of Mars in this second world war as he had eventually in the first.
He stayed home and treated only people too '4F' to ever be useful for military duty or even for the fast pace and long hours of munitions factory work.
He worked on the Venus side of Manhattan exclusively and his direct war impact was limited to filling the hearts of people all over the world with renewed hope.
But i believe that his efforts saved far more lives ,and probably won the war quicker, than The Bomb ever did.....
to RAMZI YOUSEF : a loving rebuttal
When asked why he hoped his 1993 bomb inside Manhattan's World Trade Center would kill all of the 50,000 people at the complex, the chief planner of the attack, Ramzi Yousef, said the planned massive carnage was partly to avenge the 250,000 Japanese killed by the bombs of the Manhattan Project.
It is true that the current wartime image of Manhattan does present a particularly Mars like character.
Pre-1945 Manhattan was not just the birth place of the technology that fuelled the Cold War atomic arsenals, it was also the financial and intellectual home of Eugenics - which culminated in The Holocaust.
But Manhattan is Janus-like as we all are, as the whole world is.
Within it are found big and small, good and bad, Eugenics and Emma Lazarus : indeed Venus, as well as Mars.
Venus even in, particularly in, times of war - seemingly the natural home of Mars.
Martin Henry Dawson's Manhattan Project , to liberate natural penicillin from corporate greed and eugenic medicine so that it could bring succour to the poor, the tired and the huddled in a war-torn world, saved far more lives than The Bomb ever lost.
If Ramzi Yousef had only known the full (in the round /the 360 degree) story of Manhattan, he might have thought twice about planning that 1993 bomb.
Much the same goes for those who planned 9/11 and those planning future assaults on Manhattan.
I am not a Manhattanite and reluctant to blow someone other city's horn unasked : but I simply feel that the world - and that included Manhattanites - must know more of the long ago wartime days when 'Manhattan was from Venus' , as well as from Mars....
It is true that the current wartime image of Manhattan does present a particularly Mars like character.
Pre-1945 Manhattan was not just the birth place of the technology that fuelled the Cold War atomic arsenals, it was also the financial and intellectual home of Eugenics - which culminated in The Holocaust.
But Manhattan is Janus-like as we all are, as the whole world is.
Within it are found big and small, good and bad, Eugenics and Emma Lazarus : indeed Venus, as well as Mars.
Venus even in, particularly in, times of war - seemingly the natural home of Mars.
Martin Henry Dawson's Manhattan Project , to liberate natural penicillin from corporate greed and eugenic medicine so that it could bring succour to the poor, the tired and the huddled in a war-torn world, saved far more lives than The Bomb ever lost.
If Ramzi Yousef had only known the full (in the round /the 360 degree) story of Manhattan, he might have thought twice about planning that 1993 bomb.
Much the same goes for those who planned 9/11 and those planning future assaults on Manhattan.
I am not a Manhattanite and reluctant to blow someone other city's horn unasked : but I simply feel that the world - and that included Manhattanites - must know more of the long ago wartime days when 'Manhattan was from Venus' , as well as from Mars....
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Manhattanites , "brag about your country"
It really shouldn't be my job to blow wartime Manhattan's horn.
Joe Howe, the Bluenosers' favourite son, always advised his countryman to brag about their country :
Brag of your country. When I am abroad, I brag of everything
Nova Scotia is, has or can produce and when they beat me at
everything else, I say, 'How high do your tides rise?
Don't let the 9/11 plotters define wartime Manhattan to the world
for you.
Admit The Bomb and wartime eugenic inclinations , but also talk up Henry Dawson and Patty Malone , Dante Colitti and Penicillin.
Take a bow ....
Joe Howe, the Bluenosers' favourite son, always advised his countryman to brag about their country :
Brag of your country. When I am abroad, I brag of everything
Nova Scotia is, has or can produce and when they beat me at
everything else, I say, 'How high do your tides rise?
Don't let the 9/11 plotters define wartime Manhattan to the world
for you.
Admit The Bomb and wartime eugenic inclinations , but also talk up Henry Dawson and Patty Malone , Dante Colitti and Penicillin.
Take a bow ....
Arabic translation of "Hyssop in a time of Cedar" ?
I sure hope so. Many translations. But since Arabic was the common language of the 9/11 plotters, it have been nice if they had known a little more about the city they are so determined to destroy.
They only saw Manhattan as "coming from Mars", as the birthplace of Eugenics and the Atomic War.
This is all true --- but only a partial truth.
Like all the world - like all of us - Manhattan is truly janus-like.
Within it, good and bad live in commensality, as does war and peace, love and aggression and big and small : all dine together at a common table.
I want to show the 9/11 plotters and their would-be successors that wartime Manhattan also "came from Venus".
That the borough was also home to Emma Lazarus's Golden Door and to successful efforts to ensure that wartime's life-saving penicillin was made available to all the world's tired, poor and huddled 4Fs - regardless of race, colour ,creed or gender.
If a copy of my book makes even one future would-be plotter pause and re-consider, it will be worth it....
They only saw Manhattan as "coming from Mars", as the birthplace of Eugenics and the Atomic War.
This is all true --- but only a partial truth.
Like all the world - like all of us - Manhattan is truly janus-like.
Within it, good and bad live in commensality, as does war and peace, love and aggression and big and small : all dine together at a common table.
I want to show the 9/11 plotters and their would-be successors that wartime Manhattan also "came from Venus".
That the borough was also home to Emma Lazarus's Golden Door and to successful efforts to ensure that wartime's life-saving penicillin was made available to all the world's tired, poor and huddled 4Fs - regardless of race, colour ,creed or gender.
If a copy of my book makes even one future would-be plotter pause and re-consider, it will be worth it....
Henry Dawson, Champion of the Second Chance ... and the Second Glance
Manhattan-based doctor (Martin) Henry Dawson championed the smallest, weakest and poorest of beings all his life.
On one hand, they were human beings, such as the institutionalized chronically ill at Goldwater Hospital.
Or discarded young people , dying needlessly from subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE).
In both cases, he wanted to give them a second chance at a near normal life in what was, after all, the famed City of the Second Chance.
On the other hand, sometimes his focus was upon microbe beings, creatures about whom it can't really be said that he wanted to ensure their continued survival - he felt they did that well enough on their own !
Instead, he merely wanted all of us to take a Second Glance at just how well these incredibly tiny ,delicate, immobile sacs of water managed against extremities of physical conditions and the potent threat of the human immune system and modern medicine.
Starting in the 1920s, he pioneered studies of their survival techniques such as HGT, Quorum Sensing, Molecular Mimicry and Biofilms : still cutting edge science even today, eighty years later.
His subtle point was that if these, the smallest of the small, can manage survival so well than perhaps small human beings and small human nations can also manage equally well, if we just let them live rather than trying to enslave and kill them in the name of a Progress that must always be Bigger , to be Better.
The Allied governments never one to miss a chance to match the Axis in moral turpitude , wanted wartime penicillin to remain a secret available only for the 1As - "Penicillin from New York's Cold Spring Harbour's Eugenics lab" , as it were.
Dawson was equally bull-headed in wanting to see the Nazis combatted morally as well as militarily, by demonstrating just how well we looked after our tired poor and huddled 4Fs, even during a Total War : "Penicillin from New York's Emma Lazarus", as it were.
Janus-like Manhattan tried both approaches at first , very strongly favouring the eugenic approach, until a few good Manhattanites rose up in protest.
Then wartime Manhattan was revealed to also come from the Venus of love and peace as well as from the Mars of anger and war.
Finally ... a Good News Story from the Bad News War.
On one hand, they were human beings, such as the institutionalized chronically ill at Goldwater Hospital.
Or discarded young people , dying needlessly from subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE).
In both cases, he wanted to give them a second chance at a near normal life in what was, after all, the famed City of the Second Chance.
On the other hand, sometimes his focus was upon microbe beings, creatures about whom it can't really be said that he wanted to ensure their continued survival - he felt they did that well enough on their own !
Instead, he merely wanted all of us to take a Second Glance at just how well these incredibly tiny ,delicate, immobile sacs of water managed against extremities of physical conditions and the potent threat of the human immune system and modern medicine.
Starting in the 1920s, he pioneered studies of their survival techniques such as HGT, Quorum Sensing, Molecular Mimicry and Biofilms : still cutting edge science even today, eighty years later.
His subtle point was that if these, the smallest of the small, can manage survival so well than perhaps small human beings and small human nations can also manage equally well, if we just let them live rather than trying to enslave and kill them in the name of a Progress that must always be Bigger , to be Better.
The Allied governments never one to miss a chance to match the Axis in moral turpitude , wanted wartime penicillin to remain a secret available only for the 1As - "Penicillin from New York's Cold Spring Harbour's Eugenics lab" , as it were.
The tired, poor huddled 4Fs
Dawson was equally bull-headed in wanting to see the Nazis combatted morally as well as militarily, by demonstrating just how well we looked after our tired poor and huddled 4Fs, even during a Total War : "Penicillin from New York's Emma Lazarus", as it were.
Janus-like Manhattan tried both approaches at first , very strongly favouring the eugenic approach, until a few good Manhattanites rose up in protest.
Then wartime Manhattan was revealed to also come from the Venus of love and peace as well as from the Mars of anger and war.
Finally ... a Good News Story from the Bad News War.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)