The Great Influenza (86 page)

16. A very in later life. Persistent and tenacious, he said, 'Disappointment is my daily bread. I thrive on it.' Welch asked him to find the cause of influenza. His work on influenza and pneumonia would ultimately lead him to one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.

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17. William Park, who made New York City's municipal laboratories a premier research institution. His rigorous scientific discipline, when teamed with the more creative temperament of Anna Williams [below], led to dramatic advances, including the development of a diphtheria antitoxin still in use. The National Academy of Sciences hoped they could develop a serum or vaccine for influenza.

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18. Anna Wessel Williams was probably the leading female bacteriologist in the world. A lonely woman who never married, she told herself she would 'rather [have] discontent than happiness through lack of knowledge,' and wondered 'if it would be worthwhile to make the effort to have friends and if so how I should go about it.' From her earliest memories, she dreamed 'about going places. Such wild dreams were seldom conceived by any other child.'

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19. The virus moved inexorably across the country. Here navy nurses and doctors await the onslaught.

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20. Military commanders tried to protect healthy men; at Mare Island in San Francisco sheets were hung in barracks to screen men from each other's breathing.

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21. In most cities all public meetings were banned, all public gathering places (churches, schools, theaters, and saloons (closed. Most churches simply canceled services but this one in California met outdoors, a technical violation of the closing order but a response to the congregation's need for prayer.

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22. Rufus Cole, the Rockefeller Institute scientist who had led the successful effort to develop a pneumonia vaccine and treatment just before the outbreak of the epidemic. He also made the Rockefeller Institute Hospital a model for the way clinical research is conducted, including at the National Institutes for Health.

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Seattle, like many other places, became a masked city. Red Cross volunteers made tens of thousands of masks. All police wore them. Soldiers marched through the city's downtown wearing them.

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26. More than one scientist called Paul A. Lewis 'the brightest man I ever met.' As a young investigator in 1908 he proved polio was caused by a virus and devised a vaccine that was 100 percent effective in protecting monkeys. It would be half a century before a polio vaccine could protect man. He too was one of the prime investigators searching for the cause of influenza, and a cure or preventative. Ultimately his ambition to investigate disease would cost him his life.

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