Gotham's hunky comicbook super-heroes written and drawn by 97 lb Jewish weaklings and a 4F Negro with a bad heart

Forgotten black comic book pioneer Matt Baker, Harlem artist 1921-1959

In 1940 Gotham City (and in the rest of America and the world) , if we can judge by the popularity of certain new super-heroes, moral strength seemed to be equated with physical strength.

Perfect morals requiring a perfect body.

Unfits need not apply to be super-heroes or indeed any kind of hero - moral or physical.

Ironic then if we look deep behind the colourful covers of Gotham's Golden Age of Comics because there we see them mostly written and drawn by weedy Jewish kids from poverty row , along with at least black artist with a bad heart, Matt Baker.

Updating J D Ratcliff's wartime penicillin classic, YELLOW MAGIC

I like to think that my "UN-SUPER HEROES" is an 21st century updating of JD (John Drury) Ratcliff's written-to-order 1945 popular science classic "YELLOW MAGIC" .

October 16 1940 : the Eyes of History focus in on a small hospital room on the nearly deserted Columbia University campus

Global contemporary opinion (and global contemporary journalism) was unanimous : the most important event in the world on October 16 1940 was Registration Day for America's first ever peacetime draft.

A world at war (Allied, Axis and Neutral) was momentarily united in wanting to know two things and two things only.

After the deprivation of the decade-long Great Depression and all the American university anti-war protests , were the young men of the world's greatest power able to fight and were they willing to fight ?

The fate of the world literally hung in the balance.

So all contemporary eyes were on the registration of America's potential A1 males.

But the Eyes of History, distilling events through the long glass tubes of time and sober second thoughts , may differ from global contemporary opinion , even when that global opinion was as united as it was on October 16 1940.

Because history - 75 years on - is agreed that a rare world-changing event actually did happen in America on October 16 1940 but it wasn't the coming of the Draft.

Instead it all happened, unnoticed at the time , in a small hospital room on the medical campus of New York City's Columbia University.

'There's just something about a Mercury ' : how the potential of a young black man kickstarted penicillin and has benefitted ten billion of us ever since

Can we still - 75 years on - get some sense of the personality of the very first person in history to get an antibiotics injection ?

Fortunately , yes.

But why then should we even care ?

Because, children , just because.

Because the normally reserved doctor who kickstarted natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all (the medical approach that has benefited about ten billion of us since 1940) personally wrote and told Nobel winning Ernst Chain that this patient's personality and potential had directly inspired him to take up his penicillin crusade.

When the personality of a young black man inspired medicine's biggest ever paradigm shift, an event that saved my life and that of many in my family, of course I want to know all I can about this wonderful person.

And if you have ever had a family member saved by antibiotics and if you have even an ounce of gratitude within you, so should you.

First patient to get a penicillin shot , Harlem's Aaron Leroy Alston , possibly not a widower.

Census information on individuals is always useful but bring along a couple grains of salt.

 A possible case in point is whether or not history's first antibiotics patient, Harlem's Aaron Leroy Alston, was or was not a widower - as reported by his mother on his January 1941 death certificate.

 After all there was no indication he had ever been married let alone widowed on the April 1940 census - where he was simply known as Leroy Alston - the name family and friends called him.

His nephew Claude Jay told me he does not recall any in the extended Glaze family mentioning that Leroy was ever married widowed or separated.

 But the 1930 census tells a different story.

 Born in Rockhill South Carolina in 1910 , Leroy had arrived in Harlem in 1923, an only child, with his mother mother Louise (Glaze) Alston and his father William "Stock" Alston and his cousin Reginald Daniels, about his same age.

They then opened a restaurant at the corner of 8th Avenue and 148th Street.

 By 1930, Aaron and his mother are living in different apartments in Harlem.

 Louise is reported as a widow - and a check of the indexed NYC death certificates does show a death of a William Alston on March 12 1924 , at the very young age of age 36.

 She is described as a waitress working in a tea shop and earning an appallingly low annual income.

 A. Leroy Alston, which was the preferred way that Leroy liked to call himself in print, in 1930 is shown as married to a Charlotte L Alston.

 It indicated both married two years earlier at 18 , on completing High School.

 She is a homemaker and Leroy has a good job - a clerk in a NY Underwriters office ( fire insurance) .

 A check of the indexed death certificates finds no dead Charlotte Alston in all NYC up to the end of 1948 - period.

 Instead in 1940 , the census shows a Charlotte L (L for maiden name Lee ?) Alston, living in Harlem as a daughter to Julia Lee and her age and birth state is the same as indicated in 1930.

 Now it is true that census returns , until recently, almost never used the words separated, deserted , divorced or common law.

 My partner's own father's parents both remarried without getting an (expensive / public) divorce first and continued to live very close to each other in rural Nova Scotia!

 Older family adults probably knew and small children - and the authorites - were never set wise.

 If the couple separated and both returned home to live with mother , it wasn't for lack of jobs during the terrible Great Depression which destroyed so many families in Harlem.

 Leroy kept his good job and worked it a full 52 weeks in 1939.

Many breadwinners then , white and black , had only intermittent work even when employed.

 It is mystery , either way this widowed/married or not issue is finally resolved ....

New York Times - succinct for once - on Fleming's penicillin vs Dawson's penicillin

On Feb 23rd 2009 , the New York Times did a story about the first times it ever mentioned penicillin on its pages.

In that article the Times reporter , Nicholas Bakalar , correctly (and yet so succinctly) said that in a major story on May 6th 1941 , the Times described the first ever use of penicillin IN a patient (Aaron Leroy Alston and Charles Aronson , October 16th 1940 at Manhattan's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital).

Completely true , because all previous clinical use of penicillin - stretching back 12 years and all in the UK - had involved the use of penicillin ON a patient.

The breakthrough from harmless to lifesaving happened in North America - in NYC - first.

It was left to Dr Martin Henry Dawson from new Scotland - not Dr Alexander Fleming from old Scotland -to elevate penicillin from a harmless enough antiseptic (ON) to the potent lifesaver it became (IN) - thus ushering in the Age of Lifesaving Antibiotics.

Overwhelming , external antiseptic medications* by themselves do not save patients from acute life-threatening infections - but internal antibiotic medications do .

(*Surgical and nursing procedures that follow strict disinfectant and antiseptic protocols of course do save hundreds of millions of lives worldwide each year , but indirectly,  by avoiding future potential infections.)

Antibiotics can only save patients from imminent death if used IN the body - never ON the body

It was Dr Dawson who lifted penicillin out of a dusty museum of medical curios and stuck it into a dying man's arm and saved his life - not Fleming.

Fleming thought penicillin was only useful as an antiseptic and only if it was first made artificially synthetic - neither which proved in any way accurate.

Bravo Nicolas ------ Fleming : first to put penicillin ON a patient , Dawson : first to put penicillin IN a patient ...

Aaron (Leroy) Alston : for once, a black at the FRONT of the bus : recipient of world's first ever penicillin shot

The world's first ever penicillin shots , October 16th 1940 (the first ever day of American peacetime draft registration),actually did little medically for their recipients - except in raising their morale a great deal.

Because those two patients - one black and one Jewish - knew that these penicillin shots were really 'shots across the bow' against an American establishment prepared - nay eager - to use the need to prepare for war as an excuse to roll back recent efforts to provide medical care to all those in need, even if they were unable to pay.

Regrettably, FDR himself led the charge - and would formally give this movement a name a while later when he said 'Doctor New Deal' was being replaced by 'Doctor Win the War' (at all costs).

Dr Dawson, the doctor who fired those penicillin shots across FDR's bow , argued to the contrary with his penicillin shots that we really needed to beat the Nazis by winning the moral war against them - not merely by emulating their practises in an effort to win militarily.

Because let us never forget that the day war was declared, Hitler used the excuse of war necessity to start killing those needing medical help but unable to contribute much to the war effort : the notorious Aktion T4.

America hardly needed to follow Hitler by its own Aktion 4F , in effect "Code-Slowing" its weakest and poorest citizens to an early grave.

In an era when blacks were universally told to give up their seats and go stand in the back of the bus, the fact that the very first patient to ever get a shot of the new miracle drug was not white and upper class but black and working class spoke volumes.

And it shows that the current battle against the right of all Americans to medical care against deadly diseases has ancient - and ugly - roots.

'Nuff said !