Penicillin Production Spring 1944 : a strong hint our futures will be diversified, not purified

When the chimera of man-made pure synthetic died in the Spring of 1944, Modernity - with its hope-filled visions of a Purified Future - died a little too.

And kept on dying, right up to this very day.

Dead not yet, though.

Donald Trump's firm hold on 40% of America is proof of that.

And his counterparts, usually in a slightly less bombastic form, are to be found in every country and province in the world.

That Spring of 1944 was capped by the fact that all the penicillin used on the beaches of Normandy on June 6th (the world's first ever mass clinical trial of the drug) was dirty, not pure, natural, not synthetic, and made by billions of slimy scum not a handful of serious-looking middle class Protestant men in white lab coats.

More precisely, most of that penicillin came from just one penicillin plant, an ad hoc affair in an abandoned former ice house.

That was a signal triumph for one mother, Mae Smith and one doctor Henry Dawson, who together with one baby Patty Malone, had finally convinced the boss of a small supplier to the soda pop industry, to go all out to save the war's dying.

Pfizer --- and post-Modernity --- has never ever looked back...