ent . . ." Reverting to the general question of what caused 1 ^1 

 tumors anyway, he wrote : 



These facts bring up the questions, whether it is the worms 

 themselves or their secretions that are to blame for the tumor, 

 or whether it is the ova that are chiefly to blame, as in bilhar- 

 ziosis of the bladder and intestine. 



Wherry had yet another hangover from California. It con- 

 cerned a plague-like disease of squirrels he had encountered 

 for which no causal element had been discovered. McCoy was 

 shortly to fill in this void. At the moment he wrote to Wherry 

 (February 28, 1911): 



The plague-like disease you mention is the most puzzling thing 

 we have struck. The lesions in the squirrels closely resemble 

 those of plague and in the guinea pig they would defy the most 

 experienced to distinguish them. A guinea pig will turn up on 

 the post mortem table and from the lesions, none of us can say 

 whether it is plague or the other thing. The cause of the dis- 

 ease has thus far eluded us. I have concluded that I do not know 

 much about cultural bacteriology because of the one hundred 

 and more attempts we have made to isolate the organism, every 

 one of them futile. Maybe we will strike it some day, but I am 

 beginning to get rather discouraged about it. 



Better weather, however, lay ahead. What McCoy had in 

 hand was infection with a microorganism which before 1911 

 was over, he was to grow out on laboratory media and to 

 baptize — the Bacterium tularense. 



EMOTIONAL background for Wherry's daily work was 

 of the best in 1911 and with trifling breaks it was so to 

 continue. The scientific neighbors left in California were re- 

 placed by friends newly made in Cincinnati — and they grew 

 fast in number. Even the die-hards of his reconstituted medi- 

 cal faculty were increasingly sure that Dabney had made no 

 mistake when he brought Wherry into town. His immediate 

 family was well; and the news from India was good. February 

 14, 1911, Mother reported: 



. . . Your Aunt Sarah [sister of the Rev E M Wherry] has 

 put off going [to U S] until Fall, as she thinks there is so much 



