What disease did the first two U.S. patients treated with penicillin have?

The first two U.S. patients treated with penicillin had bacterial endocarditis.

On 15 October 1940, physicians at Columbia University and Presbyterian Hospital in New York administered penicillin to Aaron Alston and Charles Aronson. Both men had bacterial endocarditis, a serious infection of the heart’s inner lining and valves that was often fatal before effective antibiotics.

The treatment used only a small supply of experimental penicillin. Production was still difficult, and the Columbia researchers had to work with limited quantities while trying to reproduce the Oxford team’s results. Their early treatment was part of a series involving four patients, not a large controlled clinical trial.

This episode is often mixed up with other famous early cases. Albert Alexander, treated in Britain in 1941, had a severe facial infection, while Anne Miller, treated in the United States in 1942, had streptococcal sepsis after a miscarriage. Those cases were important but involved different patients and diseases.