Oct 16 '40 : Dies Mirabilis , marking 75 years of Antibiotics and Draft registration

I might just do an Erik Larson and interweave Jack Kerouac and Martin Henry Dawson's experiences of that Dies Mirabilis, October 16th 1940, together in one book - and not separately as two books ...

Oct 16 '40 : for Jack Kerouac, a 1A's first ever Draft registration day was eventful ...

October 16th 1940 : Dies Mirabilis

As a husky football player from a poor family ,  John "Jack" Kerouac was not earning his usual drinking money that day by being part of the team of Columbia U football players hauling about tins of graphite or uranium for Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi's forerunner to the Manhattan Project .

Yes this gridiron hero drank.

Lord he drank , drank mostly to drown out memories of the painful prolonged death of his saintly slightly older brother Gerald,  from Rheumatic Fever in 1926 when Jack was only four.

Rheumatic Fever - and not the rather more famous polio - was far-and-away the leading killer of school age children, but it tended to kill the poor mostly .

(And because New York book editors are themselves rarely poor,  we don't hear much about this Sword of Damocles that hung over America's families for almost a hundred years.)

So with no tins of uranium to muck about, our future Poster Boy of the Beat Generation was instead enthusiastically obeying his legal requirement to be part of the historic registration process for America's first ever peacetime draft .

After registering * in the morning - he was certain to be classed 1A at any subsequent medical - job two for our future Beat that day was to go off in the afternoon to play his second ever football match for Columbia - and to promptly break a leg tibia bone.

Coach Furey didn't take the leg break seriously, told him to 'walk it better' - so Kerouac never went to Columbia university's own hospital , the Presbyterian, to have it checked out properly.

So - and rather ironically - he never got to meet Dr Martin Henry Dawson there that day , busy succouring some of NYC's 4Fs of the 4Fs ( sufferers from the endocarditis complications of childhood Rheumatic Fever) by giving them history's first ever antibiotics.

That broken leg - plus his string of arguments with his head coach Lou Little - doomed Kerouac's football scholarship to Columbia and he soon dropped out.

This 1A exemplar of American manhood went on instead to write novels and poetry , join the Merchant Marine and US Navy , drink lots more, travel, find world fame - and die young at age 47...

* Jack was only 18 in 1940, so it doesn't appear he even could be registered - the lower age limit for draft registration was 21 in 1940.  But Kerouac's biographers insist he did register too - he certainly joined his slightly older classmates in enjoying this big moment on campus - but actually registering ? -- Who knows for sure !

Draft Registration, October 16th 1940 : 75 years Young !

Due out in early 2015 is my book about the origins of America's 75 year old peacetime draft registration process.

It is another in my series of books on "Agape Penicillin".

If my book about the 'Dawning of Antibiotics' on October 16 1940 focuses on the 4Fs among America's youth, this book will focus instead on the 1As among her youth.

But I do not think it is odd or a coincidence that both events share the exact same 75th anniversary, right down to the day.

I believe that Dr Martin Henry Dawson began his antibiotics crusade on that crucial date, October 16th 1940 , as a deliberate and provocative counterpoise.

A counterpoise to 1940s America's undue emphasis on only valuing its children to the extent that they are fit enough to kill other children.

He felt all children - as well as all people - are worthy of the best possible health care simply because they are our fellow human beings.....

* Dawson had the freedom to experiment with penicllin that October day only because the very pro-war President of Columbia university had suspended classes to ensure a perfect registration drive.

After football scholarship undergrad Jack Kerouac dutifully registered that day, he went forth to play his second football game for the university.

He broke his leg and his career in football was over - its loss and literature and the Beats' gain ....