Gosh, we are already four days into the New Year! Today is cold, bright and sunny, but we had a snow/ice storm a couple of days go. I'm glad I got those new snow tires! We are getting up and down the driveway just fine.
We've had a pretty quiet start to the New Year - but not John and Cynthia. Cynthia somehow injured her left shoulder and is in a lot of pain; and then yesterday she learned that her older brother, Danny, in his 70's and with other health issues, has tested positive for COVID-19 and is in the VA Hospital in White River Jct., VT. Much concern there! We are holding them in the light!
New Year's Eve we watched the Amidon/Tracy/Bode annual Last Night concert - wonderful as always, but this year live-streamed, of course. You can find it on YouTube. We went to bed early. Saturday we got our CSA, Sunday was a wonderful Epiphany service at GCC plus we watched Ray Feinland give a talk to his Jewish War Vets org. on the history of chemotherapy - on Zoom. Very interesting! A WW2 bombing attack on a fleet of U.S ships near Bari, Italy actually led to the first treatment of cancer with chemicals! Who knew? Here is a clip from the History channel about this event:
By dawn, the patients had developed red, inflamed skin and blisters on their bodies “the size of balloons.” Within 24 hours, the wards were full of men with eyes swollen shut. The doctors suspected some form of chemical irritant, but the patients did not present typical symptoms or respond to standard treatments. The staff’s unease only deepened when notification came from headquarters that the hundreds of burn patients with unusual symptomology would be classified “Dermatitis N.Y.D.“—not yet diagnosed.
Then without warning, patients in relatively good condition began dying. These sudden, mysterious deaths left the doctors baffled and at a loss as to how to proceed. Rumors spread that the Germans had used an unknown poison gas. With the daily death toll rising, British officials in Bari placed a “red light” call alerting Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) in Algiers to the medical crisis. Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Francis Alexander, a young chemical warfare specialist attached to Eisenhower’s staff, was dispatched immediately to the scene of the disaster.
Despite the British port authorities’ denials, Alexander quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure. Convinced that preoccupation with military security had compounded the tragedy, he doggedly pursued his own investigation to identify the source of the chemical agent and determine how it had poisoned so many men.
After carefully studying the medical charts, he plotted the destroyed cargo ships’ positions relative to the gas victims and succeeded in pinpointing the John Harvey as the epicenter of the chemical explosion. When divers pulled up fragments of fractured gas shells, the casings were identified as being from 100-pound American mustard bombs.
On December 11, 1943, Alexander informed headquarters of his initial findings. Not only was the gas from the Allies’ own supply, but the victims labeled “Dermatitis N.Y.D.” had suffered prolonged exposure as a result of being immersed in a toxic solution of mustard and oil floating on the surface of the harbor.
The response Alexander received was shocking. While Eisenhower accepted his diagnosis, Churchill refused to acknowledge the presence of mustard gas in Bari. With the war in Europe entering a critical phase, the Allies agreed to impose a policy of strict censorship on the chemical disaster: All mention of mustard gas was stricken from the official record, and Alexander’s diagnosis deleted from the medical charts."
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