2^4 attempts to cultivate by partial tension and carbon dioxide 

 method the acid- fast bacilli he had discovered in the lung. "Six 

 months" of labor at the business had yielded him nothing. 



Almost simultaneously he reported (twelve pages!) upon 

 spray- borne bacteria as the cause of respiratory infection [65]. 

 Influenza and pneumonia as the fatal consequences of ordinary 

 "colds'* were still much the subject of medical debate and C T 

 Butterfield of the U S public health service had been assigned 

 to Cincinnati for collaboration. Did people "inhale" these 

 noxious organisms into their lungs, develop inflammation in 

 consequence, and die? To reproduce the situation, cultures of 

 influenza and pneumonia were sprayed into the atmosphere 

 surrounding susceptible laboratory animals. Less infection 

 resulted than most men thought. Authoritative opinion held 

 air-borne bacteria not to get far below the neck. Wherry 

 recovered his sprayed microbes from the very limits of the 

 lung. Even so they had but rarely injured the host sufficiently 

 to produce disease. "Since none of the twenty-nine mice 

 became infected after inhaling virulent pneumococci, one may 

 conclude that some predisposing factor must precede or ac- 

 company such an implantation of bacteria." The infested host 

 had to be weakened to make the disease "take." Nice stuff for 

 the medical philosophers! Just what is there to drafts and cold, 

 to overwork and worry, to bad food and bad hygiene that 

 allows so-weakened animals to cave in; the physiologically 

 right, as in these experiments, to come through? Such query 

 was fundamental. 



The mucous membranes of both the respiratory and the 

 alimentary tracts are constantly the garden plots of a "flora" 

 of large variety. In the main, the flowers are "saprophytic" 

 and just grow in the lush bottoms without harm to the under- 

 lying earth. But off and on, more wicked weeds appear and 

 the soil itself is poisoned. This study had shown how even then, 

 bad effects are the rare and not the to-be-expected conse- 

 quence. The earth was "resistant." 



Census on all the forms and all the kinds of microorganisms 

 lying about upon man's mucous membranes was far from 

 complete. Wherry had been newly inspecting the premises. 

 So he added some new names to the list of established fami- 

 lies [66]. In four pages (!) he described his isolation of, and 



