[boop]

I had to look up Jim Henson on Wikipedia. He WAS very cavalier about his health. Sure Strep Pyogenes is usually associated with sore throats, but by the time he hit the hospital he was quite ill and developed abscesses in his lungs.

Which killed him.

I always heard it was "pneumonia". Lung abscesses are quite a bit beyond regular "pneumonia".

Still should have been succeptible to antibiotics.

We had good ones in 1990.

Guess because of his delaying treatment, it was too late, regardless.

[dangerdoc]

Antibiotics don’t work in pus and it’s really hard to drain pus from lungs.

“never let the sun set on pus”

[LadyDoc]

Usually strep is mild and responds to antibiotics, but that year there was an outbreak of an especially nasty strain of that strep germ...article here.

There was an outbreak during World War II and the germ sort of quieted down since then, but we still see small outbreaks of invasive strep/septicemia/flesh eating bacteria etc. Luckily, penicillin works: but people can die if they don't get diagnosed. In Henson's case, he thought it was the flu (a virus) and so didn't seek treatment.

as for the son's death: yes, people die of heart attacks in their 40's. It's not as common as in the past but it still happens. High cholesterol is the main cause, by my husband's family has some sort of "sudden death" gene so we lose one or two men each generation. It's never been diagnosed, even though half the family are docs...maybe because we live in the rural Philippines where autopsies are rare.