A President's Son Once Died of an Infected Blister
No amount of wealth or power could save a patient from this minor ailment.
Here’s a gruesome tale to contemplate on the week of Presidents’ Day.
The year was 1924, the 16-year-old son of the president of the United States lay dying, and a bacterial infection in a blister on the third toe of his right foot was to blame. It developed earlier in the week, while he was out playing tennis on the White House lawn with his brother. Many of the best doctors of the day were consulted, multiple diagnostic tests were run, and he was admitted to one of the top hospitals in the country. Despite all that, he died within a week of infection. Sadly, the case of Calvin Coolidge’s son was not unusual. Deaths from sepsis following the infection of a minor cut or blister were extremely common at the time and no amount of wealth or power could save a patient.
Just four years later, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin—the world’s first antibiotic. That and other medical breakthroughs have helped raise global average life expectancy to an all-time high. Today, antibiotics are readily available for a few dollars at your local drugstore and around the world, and death from sepsis is much rarer than it once was. Access to antibiotics is just one of many ways in which an average person today is better off than the rich and powerful were a century ago.
Chelsea : THIS is really the beginning of BIG PHARMA because it was prohibitively expensive to produce Penicillin on a small scale. Much like Henry Ford made cars cheaply , the much maligned BIG PHARMA mass produced Penicillin which saved many lives in the military towards the end of WW11. The development and mass manufacturing of penicillin during World War II was a massive, government-funded endeavour, largely driven by the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in collaboration with British scientists and major American pharmaceutical companies. While initial, labour-intensive production in the early 1940s was extremely costly, by 1945, the industrialization process had made it affordable, reducing the price from $20 per 100,000 units in 1943 to just a few cents TO PRODUCE by the end of the war. However , to recover ALL their massive expenditure they NEED to charge much higher prices , which is where the 'general public' and indeed , 'governments' , get the "profitability" wrong ! firms like Pfizer, which invested $2.98 million ($55 million in 2025 dollars) in 1941-1044.
Sure , they could just "give it away" but they would not be around for long to provide more , or new and better medicines ! The cost of research , development , trials , promotion and launch of ANY new medicine TODAY is roughly about $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion as of 2024–2026.
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When you THINK ABOUT ALL the medicines and therapeutic goods and services available today it really helps to explain "our" collective increase in life-span , probably almost equivalent to that produced by better food production and distribution !
The entire drug development process takes, on average, 10 to 15 years , and with so few that actually become viable and tolerable medicines "we" are so fortunate that these "Capitalists" utilise and RISK their wealth and reputations on such ventures !
Only a very small fraction of molecules researched by pharmaceutical companies become approved, marketed treatments, with estimates often cited as 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 5,000 ; and 10% to 15% of drugs that enter human clinical trials (Phase I) successfully make it to the market.
Gold exploration and mining has a MUCH HIGHER chance of success ! The success rate for a gold exploration company finding an economically viable, permitted, and financed mine is exceptionally low, generally cited as being less than 0.1%.........and yet , somehow , their "profitability" comes without all the opprobrium of the drug industry !
Personally , as I take my VITAL medication each day , I give my thanks to all the "cranks" and
"shysters" who came up with all the weird and wonderful concoctions over the centuries that have ended up being the MODERN MEDICAL MARVEL that is "pharmaceuticals" today !