Henry Dawson probably surprised himself as much as he surprised the rest of his battalion, maybe even surprised his hometown community, when he revealed a talent for 'heat of the crisis' gifted improvisation and leadership during the events that led to him winning a Military Cross and Citation for Bravery.
That same talent came to the fore perhaps only two more times in his life - during his work on HGT and again in his efforts with penicillin - both times with high stakes outcomes.
He never was an emergency ward doctor or wartime clearing station doctor but he may have had the talent to excel at it.
He most clearly showed this talent in the hectic five weeks leading up to giving that needle of penicillin to Charlie Aronson, seventy years ago, on October 16th 1940.
Neither Fleming or Florey could have done this work - it simply wasn't in their character. Both were all too aware of the constant need to maintain the public image of dignity and certitude for medical scientists.
Both men also lacked that personal empathy for patients as people that led Dawson to forget his professional dignity as he literally ran about with a needle of penicillin - STAT - in his efforts to save lives....
Thursday, September 30, 2010
for Dawson, Penicillin came with only one possible modifier: "STAT!"
I have said before that the Fall of 1918 was the life-defining moment for both Henry Dawson and Howard Florey.
In September 1918, Florey's family literally tumbled down the social scale.
Down, down, down from wealthy socially prominent Upper Mitcham - sliding quickly back down the social scale to a little cottage in the lower suburbs near the city centre (Fullarton Estates in South Adelaide) rather like the humble cottage where the family had begun its life in Adelaide only 35 years earlier.
No more big mansion, no more grand summer home, no more grand automobile, no more factory and firm, no more money for school fees - all gone in the bankruptcy following his dad's sudden death.
Like Charles Dickens never forgiving his mother from not rescuing him from the blacking factory, Howard Florey never forgave his father for bringing the family firm and name to ruin by not keeping a proper watch on his subordinate employees - the event that the family claimed led to the firm's collapse.
For Dawson,September 1918 meant he was wounded once again - even more seriously this time.
Once more he had months in hospitals recovering and once again he had to endure the yells and smells of the young boys needlessly dying beside him from relatively minor wounds that had become grossly infected with bacteria.
This time, thousands of soldiers were also dying from the bacterial diseases that followed upon the infamous Spanish Flu.
Sometime during those months spent recovering, Dawson stopped referring to himself as a soldier planning to return to an Arts Degree, instead become someone planning to become a doctor.
He became a bacteria specialist in fact.
In 1940, both men got an unexpected opportunity to re-live (and more importantly, to re-do and un-do ) those traumatic events.
Florey turned his Department's entire building at Oxford University into what he called the Dunn "PENICILLIN FACTORY", run by Florey like a factory-operating Victorian paterfamilas, just as his own father had done in the family's halcyon days before the firm became a publicly traded company.
Woe to any member of the Florey family firm at the Dunn, like Norman Heatley, who dared even think of leaving the Dunn factory if Florey didn't want him to.
Leonard Bickel recounts this incident in his "Rise Up to Life" biography of Florey and when I first read it six years ago, I thought how feudal it all sounded - like the way minor Nova Scotia lumber
barons still treat their employees in backwoods communities where their mill is the only source of work.
About the only thing missing were the annual Florey 'factory family' picnics.
For Dawson, he turned his tiny lab, together with the nearby corridor and ward, into what I call his own "MANHATTAN
CLEARING # 7" , a sort of civilian casualty clearing post or station rather like the many that Dawson had served in or suffered in during the Great War.
(His lab was was on the Floor G at the Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, and G is the seventh letter of the alphabet. As he had also started his medical career in 1915, as a private
(orderly) in the Canadian #7 Stationary Hospital (organized by Dalhousie University's Medical School) - I gave his effort this particular name.)
Unlike a stationary or base hospital much of the time, a Casualty Clearing Station really operates at only one tempo ---- STAT.
This medical term means 'as fast as possible', 'immediately', 'its a clinical life-threatening emergency', all words that aptly describes the type of patients a CCS or CCP got after earlier medical posts sorted out the less wounded.
Florey and Chain openly admit they crafted their penicillin project to be a broad long term investigation on the entire topic of microbial antagonism - designed to bring in lots of work for staff and lots of grants for equipment -- to help make the Dunn into a world class research institution.
This they achieved - penicillin was only one of hundreds of antibiotics they investigated in WWII.
By contrast, Dawson strictly focused, from day one, on saving as many Juvenis Interruptus (SBE) patients as possible, as quick as possible, with penicillin.
STAT was his byword in all things penicillin and in just five weeks he had grown, concentrated, tested and now was saving lives with a substance about almost nothing was known - a record probably no other doctor has excelled.
He was too old and too 'previously wounded' to end up again the the combat front lines, but he was 'still on the job', still saving young lives anyway he could.....
In September 1918, Florey's family literally tumbled down the social scale.
Down, down, down from wealthy socially prominent Upper Mitcham - sliding quickly back down the social scale to a little cottage in the lower suburbs near the city centre (Fullarton Estates in South Adelaide) rather like the humble cottage where the family had begun its life in Adelaide only 35 years earlier.
No more big mansion, no more grand summer home, no more grand automobile, no more factory and firm, no more money for school fees - all gone in the bankruptcy following his dad's sudden death.
Like Charles Dickens never forgiving his mother from not rescuing him from the blacking factory, Howard Florey never forgave his father for bringing the family firm and name to ruin by not keeping a proper watch on his subordinate employees - the event that the family claimed led to the firm's collapse.
For Dawson,September 1918 meant he was wounded once again - even more seriously this time.
Once more he had months in hospitals recovering and once again he had to endure the yells and smells of the young boys needlessly dying beside him from relatively minor wounds that had become grossly infected with bacteria.
This time, thousands of soldiers were also dying from the bacterial diseases that followed upon the infamous Spanish Flu.
Sometime during those months spent recovering, Dawson stopped referring to himself as a soldier planning to return to an Arts Degree, instead become someone planning to become a doctor.
He became a bacteria specialist in fact.
In 1940, both men got an unexpected opportunity to re-live (and more importantly, to re-do and un-do ) those traumatic events.
Florey turned his Department's entire building at Oxford University into what he called the Dunn "PENICILLIN FACTORY", run by Florey like a factory-operating Victorian paterfamilas, just as his own father had done in the family's halcyon days before the firm became a publicly traded company.
Woe to any member of the Florey family firm at the Dunn, like Norman Heatley, who dared even think of leaving the Dunn factory if Florey didn't want him to.
Leonard Bickel recounts this incident in his "Rise Up to Life" biography of Florey and when I first read it six years ago, I thought how feudal it all sounded - like the way minor Nova Scotia lumber
barons still treat their employees in backwoods communities where their mill is the only source of work.
About the only thing missing were the annual Florey 'factory family' picnics.
For Dawson, he turned his tiny lab, together with the nearby corridor and ward, into what I call his own "MANHATTAN
CLEARING # 7" , a sort of civilian casualty clearing post or station rather like the many that Dawson had served in or suffered in during the Great War.
(His lab was was on the Floor G at the Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, and G is the seventh letter of the alphabet. As he had also started his medical career in 1915, as a private
(orderly) in the Canadian #7 Stationary Hospital (organized by Dalhousie University's Medical School) - I gave his effort this particular name.)
Unlike a stationary or base hospital much of the time, a Casualty Clearing Station really operates at only one tempo ---- STAT.
This medical term means 'as fast as possible', 'immediately', 'its a clinical life-threatening emergency', all words that aptly describes the type of patients a CCS or CCP got after earlier medical posts sorted out the less wounded.
Florey and Chain openly admit they crafted their penicillin project to be a broad long term investigation on the entire topic of microbial antagonism - designed to bring in lots of work for staff and lots of grants for equipment -- to help make the Dunn into a world class research institution.
This they achieved - penicillin was only one of hundreds of antibiotics they investigated in WWII.
By contrast, Dawson strictly focused, from day one, on saving as many Juvenis Interruptus (SBE) patients as possible, as quick as possible, with penicillin.
STAT was his byword in all things penicillin and in just five weeks he had grown, concentrated, tested and now was saving lives with a substance about almost nothing was known - a record probably no other doctor has excelled.
He was too old and too 'previously wounded' to end up again the the combat front lines, but he was 'still on the job', still saving young lives anyway he could.....
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Boots to Bombsights and back to Boots again !
Howard Florey's father won a massive government contact to supply boots to Australia's Reserve Army in the run up to World War One.
(Under the circumstances, how could he also spare his only son to actually wear one of those pairs of boots?)
Boots, along with shovels, were a big part of World War One, as millions of infantry armed with rifles and shovels were the key to a nation's continued survival and its hopes of ultimate victory.
But by 1940, low tech boots were so yesterday (along with the riflemen who wore them), as high tech bombsights - the Norden in particular - were seen as the key to survival.
In the US military, the infantry were the leftovers after all the other sections of the Army, along with the Navy and Marines, cherry-picked the best and the brightest.
By 1943, a survey revealed that not only were the MOS 745s (the frontline riflemen) less educated and less skilled than anyone else in the entire Military, they were also smaller and lighter.
Remember, these are the guys we all expected to pack on 75 pounds in extra gear and ammo and then run up hill full tilt under enemy fire, with only a millimeter of cotton twill to protect them !
Meanwhile, late in 1943, the rear echlon thumb suckers in Washington finally realized two very important things:
(1) The ultra modern Norden, together with the bomber attached to it, was as useless as a senior Congressman's mouth, when it came to actually making Germany surrender.
It was going to take old fashioned boots and shovels - lots of them - actually astride German soil, to make the Krauts to quit.
(2) There weren't enough infantry riflemen, period - let along top grade riflemen - to do the job. And as the wet, cold Fall 1943 campaign up the Italian Boot revealed, even the American boot wasn't up to the game.
Tens of thousands of the infantrymen already in desperately short supply in Italy were out of action, in hospitals with non-battlefield conditions.
Yes, some were in hospitals to be cured of VD ( much of it self- inflicted to get them out of the never-ending American meatgrinder system of Divisional combat - far worse than anything any army experienced in WWI).
This was well publicized - blaming the victim, in effect.
Less well known was the tens of thousands of foot soldiers in hospital with Trench Foot, produced by poor quality American footwear for wet winter combat conditions .
The nation that later boasted it was the first to put a pair of boots on the Moon, had more problems putting proper boots on its frontline dogfaces in WWII.
Less attention to making the plump perfect Norden mechanical bombsight and a bit more attention making better boot uppers might have been a better application of the vaunted American knowhow.
Perhaps Howard Florey should have given up penicillin and taken up his dad's trade, if he really wanted to aid America....
(Under the circumstances, how could he also spare his only son to actually wear one of those pairs of boots?)
Boots, along with shovels, were a big part of World War One, as millions of infantry armed with rifles and shovels were the key to a nation's continued survival and its hopes of ultimate victory.
But by 1940, low tech boots were so yesterday (along with the riflemen who wore them), as high tech bombsights - the Norden in particular - were seen as the key to survival.
In the US military, the infantry were the leftovers after all the other sections of the Army, along with the Navy and Marines, cherry-picked the best and the brightest.
By 1943, a survey revealed that not only were the MOS 745s (the frontline riflemen) less educated and less skilled than anyone else in the entire Military, they were also smaller and lighter.
Remember, these are the guys we all expected to pack on 75 pounds in extra gear and ammo and then run up hill full tilt under enemy fire, with only a millimeter of cotton twill to protect them !
Meanwhile, late in 1943, the rear echlon thumb suckers in Washington finally realized two very important things:
(1) The ultra modern Norden, together with the bomber attached to it, was as useless as a senior Congressman's mouth, when it came to actually making Germany surrender.
It was going to take old fashioned boots and shovels - lots of them - actually astride German soil, to make the Krauts to quit.
(2) There weren't enough infantry riflemen, period - let along top grade riflemen - to do the job. And as the wet, cold Fall 1943 campaign up the Italian Boot revealed, even the American boot wasn't up to the game.
Tens of thousands of the infantrymen already in desperately short supply in Italy were out of action, in hospitals with non-battlefield conditions.
Yes, some were in hospitals to be cured of VD ( much of it self- inflicted to get them out of the never-ending American meatgrinder system of Divisional combat - far worse than anything any army experienced in WWI).
This was well publicized - blaming the victim, in effect.
Less well known was the tens of thousands of foot soldiers in hospital with Trench Foot, produced by poor quality American footwear for wet winter combat conditions .
The nation that later boasted it was the first to put a pair of boots on the Moon, had more problems putting proper boots on its frontline dogfaces in WWII.
Less attention to making the plump perfect Norden mechanical bombsight and a bit more attention making better boot uppers might have been a better application of the vaunted American knowhow.
Perhaps Howard Florey should have given up penicillin and taken up his dad's trade, if he really wanted to aid America....
Monday, September 27, 2010
Dawson,Florey: wildly different colonial Edwardians
Howard Florey and Henry Dawson were both born in the mid 1890s and grew up in roughly similar upper/middle class circumstances in two small outposts of the Edwardian Era British Empire.
But both took wildly variant approaches to almost every major decision affecting people born in the Edwardian Era.
Most famously, these two Edwardian colonials differed wildly over the best way to quickly get penicillin into wide use during World War Two.
We abuse history if we read too much into the generalities of a particular era and not enough into the particularities of the individuals living in the era.
People, not eras, after all make the choices and do the actions.
If Florey was highly 'typical' of his Era, Dawson definitely was not 'typical' at all : however he still remained, someone from that Era -
a fact we must confront head on.....
But both took wildly variant approaches to almost every major decision affecting people born in the Edwardian Era.
Most famously, these two Edwardian colonials differed wildly over the best way to quickly get penicillin into wide use during World War Two.
We abuse history if we read too much into the generalities of a particular era and not enough into the particularities of the individuals living in the era.
People, not eras, after all make the choices and do the actions.
If Florey was highly 'typical' of his Era, Dawson definitely was not 'typical' at all : however he still remained, someone from that Era -
a fact we must confront head on.....
50 years separate Leaders at top and Teen riflemen at bottom
In every war, the top national leadership are usually in their sixties.
My definition of national leader goes well beyond prime ministers and generals to include the unseen, semi-retired, powers behind the throne: the newspaper owners, the chief shareholders of the largest corporations, the professors emeritus etc.
By contrast, the men at the pointiest end of the stick, the infantry dogfaces armed only with a rifle and a shovel, are often in their teens.
Fifty years, a very long half century, usually separates the men who run the war from those who merely did as they are told.
So a historical approach which focuses too much on the memories of youngest veterans, the ones who survive the longest on civilian street, can seriously distort the historical record.
Yes they actually fought the battles and this makes for dramatic stories.
But, but, but - a focus on their experience comes at a high price.
Babies may experience history but they certainly didn't form it.
We need always to remember that the men who caused World War I - and who led it - had their formative experience of their life in the Pre-Modern Era ( back in 1850s and 1860s).
But their front line teenage soldiers were children of the Modern Era at its most florid - the worldwide Wheat and Rail Boom that led into the Edwardian Era.
So there was a disconnect.
In the Viet Nam War, the leaders were fully from the Modern Era but the teens fighting it were of the Post-Modern Era.
Another disconnect.
However in World War II,our only fully MODERN WAR , both its leaders and its teen soldiers were both fully in the same Modern Era ----albeit up to a point.
After all its leaders grew up in the booming Edwardian Era and the kids fighting in its front lines grew up in the depths of the Great Depression.
Probing further, we can see that the Edwardian Era was one where people were both, at almost the same instant, extremely optimistic and extremely pessimistic.
Progress and Degeneracy were their two bywords.
Most Edwardian Era adults held both views but still leaned consistently more to one side or other side.
I would, for an example, place Howard Florey on the optimistic side and Henry Dawson on the pessimistic side of the Edwardian Era estimation of Man's ability to favourably affect Reality.
My book on the wartime Penicillin Saga will not shortchange the leaders of the various wars it covers.
I will highlight the fact that for most of us, our definitive values-forming experiences occur in our mid teens.
And I will then focus on the paradox that we
only get full rein to impose those teen age values on those younger than us when we are about 50 years older and our victims are themselves in their own mid-teens !
WW II leaders and their populace generally were
less convinced about the effectiveness of War elan and were more convinced of the effectiveness of War Science, in comparison to Great War populations.
This was partly due to the effect of recent experience - elan hadn't worked too well against machine guns in Flanders' Fields.
But it also reflected the intense belief in the 'Power of Science' held by Edwardian Era teenagers who were now running the Second World War at the very top of the food chain...
My definition of national leader goes well beyond prime ministers and generals to include the unseen, semi-retired, powers behind the throne: the newspaper owners, the chief shareholders of the largest corporations, the professors emeritus etc.
By contrast, the men at the pointiest end of the stick, the infantry dogfaces armed only with a rifle and a shovel, are often in their teens.
Fifty years, a very long half century, usually separates the men who run the war from those who merely did as they are told.
So a historical approach which focuses too much on the memories of youngest veterans, the ones who survive the longest on civilian street, can seriously distort the historical record.
Yes they actually fought the battles and this makes for dramatic stories.
But, but, but - a focus on their experience comes at a high price.
Babies may experience history but they certainly didn't form it.
We need always to remember that the men who caused World War I - and who led it - had their formative experience of their life in the Pre-Modern Era ( back in 1850s and 1860s).
But their front line teenage soldiers were children of the Modern Era at its most florid - the worldwide Wheat and Rail Boom that led into the Edwardian Era.
So there was a disconnect.
In the Viet Nam War, the leaders were fully from the Modern Era but the teens fighting it were of the Post-Modern Era.
Another disconnect.
However in World War II,our only fully MODERN WAR , both its leaders and its teen soldiers were both fully in the same Modern Era ----albeit up to a point.
After all its leaders grew up in the booming Edwardian Era and the kids fighting in its front lines grew up in the depths of the Great Depression.
Probing further, we can see that the Edwardian Era was one where people were both, at almost the same instant, extremely optimistic and extremely pessimistic.
Progress and Degeneracy were their two bywords.
Most Edwardian Era adults held both views but still leaned consistently more to one side or other side.
I would, for an example, place Howard Florey on the optimistic side and Henry Dawson on the pessimistic side of the Edwardian Era estimation of Man's ability to favourably affect Reality.
My book on the wartime Penicillin Saga will not shortchange the leaders of the various wars it covers.
I will highlight the fact that for most of us, our definitive values-forming experiences occur in our mid teens.
And I will then focus on the paradox that we
only get full rein to impose those teen age values on those younger than us when we are about 50 years older and our victims are themselves in their own mid-teens !
WW II leaders and their populace generally were
less convinced about the effectiveness of War elan and were more convinced of the effectiveness of War Science, in comparison to Great War populations.
This was partly due to the effect of recent experience - elan hadn't worked too well against machine guns in Flanders' Fields.
But it also reflected the intense belief in the 'Power of Science' held by Edwardian Era teenagers who were now running the Second World War at the very top of the food chain...
Saturday, September 25, 2010
War hospital stays made Dawson bacteriologist not surgeon
Not until February 1919, when the war was over, and Henry Dawson was back in Canada facing discharge, did he say that his civilian occupation was to be a MEDICAL student.
Until then, he was just an Arts student.
With his excellent marks, if in 1915 he had told military recruiters that he was intending to go into med school, he would have been almost 'ordered' to remain in school and become a doctor, as they were so desperately needed .
He spent a year in military hospitals as a buck private orderly, dealing with the severely injured and severely infected wounded coming off the battlefields.
Many other patients ,less dramatically, were
nevertheless dying from diseases they had picked up in other places than from a battlefield wound.
Then he was wounded,once as a infantry officer and then once as an artillery officer, both times fairly severely, and spent long periods in various hospitals.
The only heroes in these wound-oriented hospitals were the surgeons - they saved lives by their skill with a good eye and a steady hand.
The nursing staff might save lives by attention to detail in keeping wounds clean.
But regular (clinician) doctors contributed little towards a cure - they could diagnose but didn't have any medicine to save a patient if severe blood poisoning set in.
Bacteria were more dangerous than German bullets.
Interesting, there is no evidence Dawson decided to try and become a surgeon like all the surgeon-heroes he had met in the hospitals, once he was at McGill's Med School.
Instead Dawson quickly became a bacteriologist-pathologist and remained so all his life.
I think he felt that too many of the healthy young boys around him in his stays in hospital had survived their battlefield wound and had survived the surgery , only to die of bacterial infection.
This, he felt, was medicine's weakest link.
He wasn't seeking to emulate his medical heroes, but rather seeking to reform medicine from within.
I believe he set out with a critical attitude to the existing medical practise - he felt it didn't give enough attention to the successful bacteria's secrets.
I think he saw too many young boys needlessly die who had never danced or ever been kissed...
Until then, he was just an Arts student.
With his excellent marks, if in 1915 he had told military recruiters that he was intending to go into med school, he would have been almost 'ordered' to remain in school and become a doctor, as they were so desperately needed .
He spent a year in military hospitals as a buck private orderly, dealing with the severely injured and severely infected wounded coming off the battlefields.
Many other patients ,less dramatically, were
nevertheless dying from diseases they had picked up in other places than from a battlefield wound.
Then he was wounded,once as a infantry officer and then once as an artillery officer, both times fairly severely, and spent long periods in various hospitals.
The only heroes in these wound-oriented hospitals were the surgeons - they saved lives by their skill with a good eye and a steady hand.
The nursing staff might save lives by attention to detail in keeping wounds clean.
But regular (clinician) doctors contributed little towards a cure - they could diagnose but didn't have any medicine to save a patient if severe blood poisoning set in.
Bacteria were more dangerous than German bullets.
Interesting, there is no evidence Dawson decided to try and become a surgeon like all the surgeon-heroes he had met in the hospitals, once he was at McGill's Med School.
Instead Dawson quickly became a bacteriologist-pathologist and remained so all his life.
I think he felt that too many of the healthy young boys around him in his stays in hospital had survived their battlefield wound and had survived the surgery , only to die of bacterial infection.
This, he felt, was medicine's weakest link.
He wasn't seeking to emulate his medical heroes, but rather seeking to reform medicine from within.
I believe he set out with a critical attitude to the existing medical practise - he felt it didn't give enough attention to the successful bacteria's secrets.
I think he saw too many young boys needlessly die who had never danced or ever been kissed...
Florey family and PATENTS :ducks and water
In the reverential biographies of Howard Florey ( he has never had a critical biography - I hope to inspire one of them though), he is always played as the anti-patent guy on penicillin.
By contrast, Ernst Chain is always played as the greedy pro-patent guy.
Well, he is Jewish after all - he would be the greedy money-grubbing one, won't he ?
Edward Abraham, who was there at the time, says that both were pro-patent to a degree - seeking Oxford University to control it ,(as the University of Toronto did insulin).
I agree.
The assumption was made that because Chain's father was in some sort of chemistry business in Germany Chain the PhD chemist would know all about the importance of patents.
(But we don't actually know if his father was involved in patents.)
But Florey ,the MD, would not anything about patents - against MD ethics in the UK at the time. Etc.
Bull dung !
Florey-the-son had wanted to be a chemist and was only nominally a MD in reality anyway.
His father had made his fortune by being the first into a new cutting edge technology, the first into high tech chemistry and trade marks, and by being the first in his state to obtain exclusive geographic rights to new processes.
Joseph Florey even tried to obtain at least one patent himself - for improvements in pneumatic tyres - applied for in Western Australia on May 16 1996, according to the local daily paper.
Leather making technology hadn't changed in around 10,000 years - so when it did, many in the industry refused to take the first leap.
Beyond how technically challenging the new ways of tanning leather were, was the fact that they were not public domain and free, as the tannin way of leather-making had been for centuries.
Florey took both risks and fell into a hot area of patents and licenses and paying high fees - or ignoring patents and fees and focussing on trade marks instead.
His many ads never claimed he had a patent for his chromella leather or even a patent license with a registered number - merely that he was the exclusive South Australia agent for it and held control of it as a trademark.
I haven't been able to find the original owner of chromella leather, but I believe very much they existed.
Here is why:
Florey's very first time he is mentioned in any newspaper seems to have been the month (October 1894) - even the day - he got that exclusive agency for chromella and he took out ads proclaiming that fact.
The word chromella almost never left the Australian papers, in some form or other, until well after his death.
His wealth seemed to have started around 1894 as well.
Having that chromella agency really seemed to have mattered.
But Joseph Florey having interests in tyres and patents of his own was news to me.
Patent talk would have been mother's milk to his son, Howard.
And I think we all owe Chain a heartfelt apology....
By contrast, Ernst Chain is always played as the greedy pro-patent guy.
Well, he is Jewish after all - he would be the greedy money-grubbing one, won't he ?
Edward Abraham, who was there at the time, says that both were pro-patent to a degree - seeking Oxford University to control it ,(as the University of Toronto did insulin).
I agree.
The assumption was made that because Chain's father was in some sort of chemistry business in Germany Chain the PhD chemist would know all about the importance of patents.
(But we don't actually know if his father was involved in patents.)
But Florey ,the MD, would not anything about patents - against MD ethics in the UK at the time. Etc.
Bull dung !
Florey-the-son had wanted to be a chemist and was only nominally a MD in reality anyway.
His father had made his fortune by being the first into a new cutting edge technology, the first into high tech chemistry and trade marks, and by being the first in his state to obtain exclusive geographic rights to new processes.
Joseph Florey even tried to obtain at least one patent himself - for improvements in pneumatic tyres - applied for in Western Australia on May 16 1996, according to the local daily paper.
Leather making technology hadn't changed in around 10,000 years - so when it did, many in the industry refused to take the first leap.
Beyond how technically challenging the new ways of tanning leather were, was the fact that they were not public domain and free, as the tannin way of leather-making had been for centuries.
Florey took both risks and fell into a hot area of patents and licenses and paying high fees - or ignoring patents and fees and focussing on trade marks instead.
His many ads never claimed he had a patent for his chromella leather or even a patent license with a registered number - merely that he was the exclusive South Australia agent for it and held control of it as a trademark.
I haven't been able to find the original owner of chromella leather, but I believe very much they existed.
Here is why:
Florey's very first time he is mentioned in any newspaper seems to have been the month (October 1894) - even the day - he got that exclusive agency for chromella and he took out ads proclaiming that fact.
The word chromella almost never left the Australian papers, in some form or other, until well after his death.
His wealth seemed to have started around 1894 as well.
Having that chromella agency really seemed to have mattered.
But Joseph Florey having interests in tyres and patents of his own was news to me.
Patent talk would have been mother's milk to his son, Howard.
And I think we all owe Chain a heartfelt apology....
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