Microbe Hunters

by Paul De Kruif

  That night, of the thirtieth of November, Walter Reed and James Carroll were the witnesses of a miracle of bravery, for into this House No. 1 walked a young American doctor named Cooke, and two American soldiers, whose names—where are their monuments?—were Folk and Jernegan.

  Those three men opened the tightly nailed, suspicious-looking boxes. They opened those boxes inside that house, in air already too sticky for proper breathing.

  Phew! There were cursings, there were holdings of noses.

  But they went on opening those boxes, and out of them Cooke and Folk and Jernegan took pillows, soiled with the black vomit of men dead of yellow fever; out of them they took sheets and blankets, dirty with the discharges of dying men past helping themselves. They beat those pillows and shook those sheets and blankets—“you must see the yellow fever poison is well spread around that room!” Walter Reed had told them. Then Cooke and Folk and Jernegan made up their little army cots with those pillows and blankets and sheets. They undressed. They lay down on those filthy beds. They tried to sleep—in that room fouler than the dankest of medieval dungeons. . . And Walter Reed and James Carroll guarded that little house, so tenderly, to see no mosquito got into it, and Folk and Cooke and Jernegan had the very best of food, you may be sure. . .

  Night after night those three lay in that house, wondering perhaps about the welfare of the souls of their predecessors in those sheets and blankets. They lay there, wondering whether anything else besides mosquitoes (though mosquitoes hadn't even been proved to carry it then!) carried yellow fever. . . Then Walter Reed, who was a moral man and a thorough man, and James Carroll, who was a grim man, came to make their test a little more thorough. More boxes came to them from Las Animas—and when Cooke and Jernegan and Folk unpacked them, they had to rush out of their little house, it was so dreadful.

  But they went back in, and they went to sleep. . . For twenty nights—where are their monuments?—these three men stayed there, and then they were quarantined in a nice airy tent, to wait for their attack of yellow fever. But they gained weight. They felt fit as fiddles. They made vast jokes about their dirty house and their perilous sheets and blankets. They were happy as so many schoolboys when they heard Kissenger and those Spaniards (1, 2, 3, and 4) had really got the yellow jack after the mosquito bites. What a marvelous proof, you will say, but what a dastardly experiment—but for the insanely scientific Walter Reed that most dastardly experiment was not marvelous enough! Three more American boys went in there, and for twenty nights slept in new unspeakable sheets and blankets—with this little refinement of the experiment: they slept in the very pajamas in which yellow fever victims had died. And then for twenty more nights three other American lads went into House No. 1, and slept that way—with this additional little refinement of the experiment: they slept on pillows covered with towels soaked with the blood of men whom the yellow jack had killed.

  But they all stayed fit as fiddles! Not a soul of these nine men had so much as a touch of yellow fever! How wonderful is science, thought Walter Reed. “So,” he wrote, “the bubble of the belief that clothing can transmit yellow fever was pricked by the first touch of human experimentation.” Walter Reed was right. It is true, science is wonderful. But science is cruel, microbe hunting can be heartless, and that relentless devil that was the experimenter in Walter Reed kept asking: “But is your experiment really sound?” None of those men who slept in House No. 1 got yellow fever, that is true—but how do you know they were susceptible to yellow fever? Maybe they were naturally immune! Then Reed and Carroll, who had already asked as much of Folk and Jernegan as any captain has ever asked of any soldier—so it was that Reed and Carroll now shot virulent yellow fever blood under the skin of Jernegan, so it was they bit Folk with mosquitoes who had fed on fatal cases of yellow fever. They both came down with wracking pains and flushed faces and bloodshot eyes. They both came through their Valley of the Shadow. “Thank God,” murmured Reed—but especially Walter Reed thanked God he had proved those two boys were not immune during those twenty hot stinking nights in House No. 1.

  For these deeds Warren Gladsden Jernegan and Levi E. Folk were generously rewarded with a purse of three hundred dollars—which in those days was a lot of money.

  5

  While these tests were going on John J. Moran, that civilian clerk from Ohio, whom Walter Reed had paid the honor of a salute, was a very disappointed man. He had absolutely refused to be paid; he had volunteered in “the interest of science and for the cause of humanity,” he had been bitten by those silver-striped Stegomyia mosquitoes (the bug experts just then thought this was the proper name for that mosquito)—he had been stabbed several times by several choice poisonous ones, but he hadn't come down with yellow fever, alas, he stayed fit as a fiddle. What to do with John J. Moran?

  “I have it!” said Walter Reed. “This to do with John J. Moran!”

  So there was built, close by that detestable little House No. 1, another little house, called House No. 2. That was a comfortable house! It had windows on the side opposite to its door, so that a fine trade wind played through it. It was cool. It had a nice clean cot in it, with steam-disinfected bedding. It could have been an excellent house for a consumptive to get better in. It was a thoroughly sanitary little house. Half way across the inside of it was a screen, from top to bottom, a fine-meshed screen that the tiniest mosquito found it impossible to fly through. At 12 o'clock noon on the twenty-first of December in 1900, this John J. Moran (who was a hog for these tests) “clad only in a nightshirt and fresh from a bath” walked into this healthy little house. Five minutes before Reed and Carroll had opened a glass jar in that room, and out of that jar flew fifteen she-mosquitoes, thirsty for blood, whining for a meal of blood, and each and every one of those fifteen mosquitoes, had fed, on various days before—on the blood of yellow-faced boys in the hospital of Las Animas.

  Clad only in a nightshirt and fresh from a bath, Moran—who knows of him now?—walked into the healthy little room and lay down on his clean cot. In a minute that damned buzzing started round his head, in two minutes he was bitten, in the thirty minutes he lay there he was stabbed seven times—without even the satisfaction of smashing those mosquitoes. You remember Mr. Sola, whom Grassi tortured—he probably had his worried moments—but all Mr. Sola had to look forward to was a little attack of malaria and a good dose of curative quinine to get him out of it. But Moran? But John J. Moran was a hog for such tests! He was back there at four-thirty the same afternoon, to be bitten again, and once more the next day—to satisfy the rest of the hungry she-mosquitoes who hadn't found him the first day. In the other room of this house, with only a fine meshed but perfect wire screen between them and Moran—and the mosquitoes—lay two other boys, and those two boys slept in that house safely for eighteen nights.

  But Moran?

  On Christmas morning of 1900, there was a fine present waiting for him—in his head, how that thumped—in his eyes, how red they were and how the light hurt them—in his bones, how tired they were! A nasty knock those mosquitoes had hit him and he came within a hair of dying but (thank God! murmured Walter Reed) he was saved, this Moran, to live the rest of his life in an obscurity he didn't deserve. So Moran had his wish—in the interest of science, and for humanity! So he, with Folk and Jernegan and Cooke and all those others proved that the dirty pest hole of a house (with no mosquitoes) was safe; and that the clean house (but with mosquitoes) was dangerous, so dangerous! So at last Walter Reed had every answer to his diabolical questions, and he wrote, in that old-fashioned prose of his: “The essential factor in the infection of a building with yellow fever is the presence therein of mosquitoes that have bitten cases of yellow fever.”

  It was so simple. It was true. That was all. That was that. And Walter Reed wrote to his wife:

  “The prayer that has been mine for twenty years, that I might be permitted in some way or at some time to do something to alleviate human suffering has been granted! A thousand Happy New Years. .
. Hark, there go the twenty-four buglers in concert, all sounding taps for the old year!”

  They were sounding taps, were those buglers, for the searcher that was Jesse Lazear, and for the scourge of yellow fever that could now be wiped from the earth. They were blowing their bugles, those musicians, to celebrate—as you will see—the fate that waited for that little commission after a too short hour of triumph. . .

  6

  Then the world came to Habana, and there was acclaim for Walter Reed, and the customary solemn discussions and doubts and arguments of the learned men who came. William Crawford Gorgas (who was another blameless man!) grooming himself for the immortality of Panama, went into the gutters and cesspools and cisterns of Habana, making horrid war on the Stegomyia mosquitoes, and in ninety days, Habana had not a single case of yellow jack—she was free for the first time in two hundred years. It was magical! But still there came learned doctors, and solemn bearded physicians, from Europe and America, asking this, questioning that—and one morning fifteen of these skeptics were in the mosquito room of the laboratory—oh! they were from Missouri! “These are remarkable experiments, but the results should be weighed and considered with reserve. . . et cetera!” Then the gauze lid came off a jar of she-mosquitoes (of course it was by accident) and into the room, with wicked lustful eyes on those learned scientists the Stegomyia buzzed. Alas for skepticism! Away went all doubts! From the room rushed the eminent servants of knowledge! Down went the screen door with a crash-such was the vehemence of their conviction that Walter Reed was right (Though it happened that this particular jar of mosquitoes was not contaminated.)

  Then William Crawford Gorgas and John Guitéras—he was a great Cuban authority on yellow jack—they were convinced too by those experiments at Camp Lazear, and they were full of excellent plans to put those experiments in practice—fine plans, but rash plans, alas. “It is remarkable,” said Gorgas and Guitéras, “that these experimental cases at Camp Lazear didn't die—they had typical yellow fever, but they got better, maybe because Reed put them to bed so quickly.” Then they proceeded to play with fire. “We will give newly arrived non-immune immigrants yellow fever—a smart attack of it, but a safe attack of it.” They planned this, when it really was so easy to wipe out yellow fever simply by warring on the Stegomyia, which does not breed in secret places, which is a very domestic mosquito! “And at the same time we can confirm Reed's results,” thought Gorgas and Guitéras.

  The immigrants (of course they were very ignorant people) came; the immigrants listened and were told it was safe; seven immigrants and a bold young American nurse were bitten by the poisoned Stegomyia. And of these eight, two immigrants and the bold young American nurse went out from the hospital, safe from another attack of yellow fever, safe from all the worries of the world. . . They went out, feet first—to slow music. What a fine searcher was Walter Reed—but what amazing luck he had, in those experiments at Camp Lazear. . .

  There was panic in Habana, and mutterings of the mob—and who can blame that mob, for human life is sacred. But there was Assistant Surgeon James Carroll, unsentimental as an embalmer and before all else a soldier,—he had just then come back to Habana to settle certain little academic questions. “We can wipe out yellow fever now, we have proved just how it gets from man to man—but what is it causes yellow fever?” This is what Reed and Carroll asked each other, and everybody must admit that it was a purely academic question, and I ask you: was it worth a human life (even of a Spanish immigrant) to find the answer? Myself I cannot answer yes or no. But Reed and Carroll answered yes! Starting out as soldiers obeying orders, as humanitarians risking their hides to save the lives of men, they had been bitten by the virus of the search for truth, cold truth—they were enchanted with the glory that comes from the discovery of unknown things. . .

  They were sure there was no visible bacillus, nor any kind of microbe that could be seen through the strongest microscope to cause it—they had looked in the livers of men and the lights of mosquitoes for such a germ, in vain. But there were other possibilities—magical possibilities, of a new kind of germ that might be the cause of yellow fever, an ultra-microbe, too immensely small for the strongest lens to uncover, revealing its existence only by the murdering of men with its unseen mysterious poison. That might be the nature of the germ of yellow fever. Old Friedrich Loeffler—he of the mustaches—had found such little life making calves sick with foot-and-mouth disease. And now if Reed and Carroll could show the microbe of yellow fever belonged to this sub-microscopic world too!

  Walter Reed was busy, so he sent James Carroll to Habana to see, and here you find James Carroll, intensely annoyed because those experimental cases of Guitéras had died. Guitéras—do you blame him?—was in a funk. No, Carroll mightn't draw blood from yellow fever patients. Indeed not, Carroll mightn't even bite them with mosquitoes. What was most silly, Dr. Guitéras would rather not have Dr. Carroll make post-mortems on the dead cases—it might enrage the population of Habana. “You can imagine my disappointment!” wrote Carroll to Walter Reed, with indignant remarks about the frivolous fears of ignorant populations. But did those deaths stop him? Not Carroll!

  By some unexplained sorceries he got hold of some good poisonous yellow fever blood, and filtered it through a porcelain filter that was so fine no visible microbe could get through it. The stuff that came through that filter Carroll shot under the skin of three non-immunes (history doesn't tell how he induced them to stand for it)—and presto! two of them got yellow fever. Hurrah! Yellow fever was like foot-and-mouth disease then. Its cause was a germ maybe too little to see, a microbe that could sneak through fine-grained porcelain.[1]

  Reed wrote to stop him: those deaths were too much—but Carroll simply must get some contaminated mosquitoes, and by some bold devilry he did get them, and heigho for this final most horrible experiment!

  “In my own case,” said Carroll, “produced by the bite of a single mosquito, a fatal result was looked for during several days. I became so firmly convinced that the severity of the attack depended upon the susceptibility of an individual rather than on the number of bites he had got, that on October 9, 1901, at Habana, I purposely applied to a non-immune eight mosquitoes (all I had) that had been contaminated eighteen days before. The attack that followed was a mild one,” ended Carroll, triumphantly. But what if that patient had died—as God knows he might have?

  Such was the strangest of that strange crew, and looking back on this his boldness, in despite of his fanatic prying into dangerous mysteries, my hat is off to this bald-headed bespectacled ex-lumberjack searcher. He himself was the first to be bit, it was Carroll gave the example to those American soldiers, to that civilian clerk, and to those Spanish immigrants—1, 2, 3, and 4—and to all the rest of the unknown numbers of them. And do you remember, in the middle of his attack of yellow fever, that moment when his heart seemed to stop? In 1907, six years after, Carroll's heart stopped for good. …

  7

  And in 1902, five years before that, Walter Reed, in the prime of his life, but tired, so tired, died—just as the applause of nations grew thunderous—of appendicitis. “I am leaving my wife and daughter so little. . . ” said Walter Reed to his friend Kean, just before the ether cone went down over his face. “So little. . . ” he mumbled as the ether let him down into his last dreams. But let us be proud of our nation, and proud of our Congress—for they voted Mrs. Emilie Laurence Reed, wife of the man who has saved the world no one knows what millions of dollars—let us say nothing of lives—they voted her a handsome pension, of fifteen hundred dollars a year! And the same for the widow of Lazear, and the same for the widow of James Carroll—and surely that was handsome for them, because, as one committee of senators quaintly said: “They can still help themselves.”

  But what of Private Kissenger, of Ohio, who stood that test, in the interest of science—and for humanity? He didn't die from yellow fever. And they prevailed upon him, at last, to accept one hundred and fifteen dollars and a go
ld watch, which was presented to him in the presence of the officers and men of Columbia barracks. He didn't die—but what was worse, as the yellow fever germs went out of him, a paralysis crept into him—now he sits, counting the hours on his gold watch. But what luck! At the last account he had a good wife to support him by taking in washing.

  And what of the others? Time is too short to deal with those others—and besides I do not know what has become of them. So it is that this strange crew has made rendezvous, each one, with his special and particular fate—this strange crew who put the capstone on that most marvelous ten years of the microbe hunters, that crew who worked together so that now, in 1926, there is hardly enough of the poison of yellow fever left in the world to put on the points of six pins. . .

  So it is that the good death-fighter, David Bruce, should eat his words: “It is impossible, at present, to experiment with human beings.”

  12. PAUL EHRLICH:

  The Magic Bullet

  1

  Two hundred and fifty years ago, Antony Leeuwenhoek, who was a matter-of-fact man, looked through a magic eye, saw microbes, and so began this history. He would certainly have snorted a contemptuous Dutch sort of snort at anybody who called his microscope a magic eye.

  Now Paul Ehrlich—who brings this history to the happy end necessary to all serious histories—was a gay man. He smoked twenty-five cigars a day; he was fond of drinking a seidel of beer (publicly) with his old laboratory servant and many seidels of beer with German, English and American colleagues; a modern man, there was still something medieval about him for he said: “We must learn to shoot microbes with magic bullets.” He was laughed at for saying that, and his enemies cartooned him under the name “Doktor Phantasm.”