1 'X Q found it related to the germ of hog cholera and christened it the 

 Bacillus cholera-cavice. He sent cultures to Theobald Smith. 

 "They were received in perfect condition; also the notes per- 

 taining thereto," said Smith. Less than a month later he wrote 

 further (November 2, 1908) : "You are quite right to give 

 this organism a name, for you have found a use for it which I 

 hope will prove of permanent value. B pestis-cavice might be 

 better since the disease may appear as multiple spleen & liver 

 abscesses or as a puerperal disease." The newer name was to 

 endure. As to the "use for it," this lay in its effectiveness as a 

 death dealing disease if fed to rats [24], It was acutely fatal 

 to their young (and to mice), Wherry found; but not to 

 adults, a large percentage of which was naturally immune or 

 recovered if successfully sickened. 



Wherry lived in the large blue heaven of parasitism as abso- 

 lutely as did the great Smith himself. On this account another 

 letter from Smith out of the period (written from Lynton, 

 Devonshire, July 18, 1909) needs quotation: 



The relation of B cavlce to the other members of the para-colon 

 group I shall not be able to approach. Your own information 

 by this time is more comprehensive than mine. I think that the 

 only way to find out relationships is to infect other species, as 

 you are doing and attempt by passages (of feeding) to adapt 

 one to another host. We cannot tell how plastic these varieties 

 are or how adaptable until we have tried to modify them. The 

 experiment is still the only clue. 



In a further paper [23] by Wherry, yet another disease in 

 rats was described — an infection with a diplococcus resem- 

 bling that of epidemic meningitis. By itself it was just the 

 discovery of another organism. More important in Wherry's 

 eyes was its variation in growth characteristics. The paired 

 micrococci grew out as chains when cultivated artificially, to 

 revert to the diplococcal form when inoculated into animals. 



His work on rat leprosy got Walter R Brinckerhoff, in 

 charge of the leprosy investigation station at Molokai (TH) 

 excited. "The rats arrived all right on the Alameda," 

 Brinckerhoff reported (August 1908) and "I am obliged for 

 the very complete notes ... It seemed like old times to get 

 hold of such a business-like collection of data." More letters 



