442 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



nection with an obituary notice of him in the British Medical 

 Journal of October 8, 1921, " He was one for whom the interest 

 of the laboratory was ancillary to, and simply enhanced his 

 interest in, practical medicine." This attitude seems to be- 

 come more rare nowadays, when the laboratory and the bedside 

 are becoming more and more separated, much to the loss of 

 medical practice. People thought he was too reserved ; but, 

 as a matter of fact, he was a very loyal friend and helper. 



Years ago he suffered what was really a very serious mis- 

 fortune to him. In 1 896 he was working in Griiber's laboratory 

 in Vienna. At that time Griiber and Durham had devised the 

 very important agglutination test for detecting various kinds 

 of infection by examination of the blood, but, I think, had only 

 carried it to a successful theoretical stage. Griinbaum, as he 

 then was, at once thought of applying it for the diagnosis 

 of enteric fever, and had actually tried it on a few cases, but, 

 having a true scientific capacity, did not rush into print on 

 the subject, especially as his material was scanty. Unfor- 

 tunately, while he was studying the matter further, Griiber 

 mentioned his work at a congress, where the distinguished 

 French physician. Dr. Vidal, happened to be. Dr. Vidal had a 

 number of typhoid cases under him at the time, tried the test 

 at once, and showed that it was perfectly correct and practicable 

 — ^with the result that he got the credit for the invention through- 

 out the world, the test being called the Vidal Test everywhere. 

 Of course Griinbaum 's name was forgotten in public estimation 

 — which meant that he lost many of the opportunities which he 

 might otherwise have enjoyed. Some years later I wrote some 

 letters to the medical press pointing out these facts on behalf 

 of my friend — who could not speak for himself without being 

 accused of boasting ; but, as I was not a bacteriologist, I fear 

 that my humble efforts did not have much effect, and the test 

 was continued to be employed throughout the world under 

 Vidal's name — medical men do not read much, and errors 

 of this kind once started can never be overtaken. I should like 

 to add, however, that unlike certain piracies in connection with 

 some tropical diseases. Dr. Vidal's action in this matter had 

 been quite irreproachable. Even in his first paper he had men- 

 tioned that Dr. Griiber had given him the hint, and it was in 

 no way his fault that Griinbaum lost the credit due to him. 

 It is unfortunate that our learned societies do not pay more 

 attention to matters of this kind. The agglutination reaction 

 was an extremely valuable addition to the medical armoury — 

 was, indeed, a discovery almost of the first importance, and its 

 application to typhoid has undoubtedly saved the lives of 

 thousands of people. It was hard on Griinbaum that his full 

 part in this discovery was not more widely recognised ; and 



