(like some other organisms to be discovered later) being "acid- ' "7 S 

 fast." Acid-fastness thus became a characteristic of the germ. 

 Wherry had long had in hand a strain of B tuberculosis 

 gotten out of Koch's laboratory in 1888 by his distinguished 

 pupil, Victor C Vaughan ( * 1 8 5 1 , the one-time Latin teacher 

 who as professor of hygiene and physiological chemistry in 

 Michigan's university showed how flies, sloppiness and typhoid 

 in 1898 killed and maimed more American soldiers than 

 Spanish bullets). Even then it had been the 106th transplant 

 from one of Koch's first cultures. Wherry had watched it for 

 some years himself, transplanting it to a new garden every 

 two months. Time and this hard life had tamed the brute. 

 In 1 9 1 3 Wherry described it as a "saprophyte" — meaning that 

 it could no longer produce disease, even when injected into 

 the least resistant of animals, the guinea pig. Correlative sign 

 of its weakness was the organism's inability to retain color — 

 it was no longer "acid- fast" (acid-proof, as Wherry said 

 correctly in his meticulous English) . Wherry would see [37] 

 what in laboratory life had thus brought down the old "cap- 

 tain of the men of death." He grew it out once more on the 

 meanest of culture grounds, but one of which he knew the 

 exact composition. In these, "acid-fastness" never appeared. 

 Whereafter he added various alcohols, and various sugars; and 

 now the acid- fastness returned, even to the point where all 

 the "rods" stained deeply. The vinegars and ammonium salts 

 (or the simple ammoniacal compounds found in digested 

 meat) along with some simple sugars or the alcohols (propyl 

 and glycerine) were all that was needed. Thus he made another 

 "inborn characteristic" of a "species" merely a matter of its 

 "environment." 



FEBRUARY 7, 1913, Hektoen wrote: "To come to the 

 point at once — I would like very much to know whether 

 you would care to come back to Chicago and work in the 

 Memorial Institute." 



Ever since Wherry had been brought as subaltern to 

 Cincinnati, Hektoen's blood had boiled. Now the new John 

 McCormick building and hospital for infectious diseases, of 

 which he was chief, was about to be opened on Chicago's West 



