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talking—instead of telling them that his microbes were the true cause of anthrax, he showed these sophisticated professors. For three days and nights he showed them, taking them in swift steps through those searchings he had sweated at—groping and failing often—for years. Never was there a greater come-down for bigwigs who had arrived prepared to be indulgent to a nobody. Koch never argued once, he never bubbled and raved and made prophecies—but he slipped slivers into mouse tails with an unearthly cleverness, and the experienced professors of pathology opened their eyes to see him handle his spores and bacilli and microscopes like a sixty-year-old master. It was a knock-out!

At last Professor Cohnheim, one of the most skillful scientists in the study of diseases in all of Europe, could hold himself no longer. He rushed from the hall, hurried to his own laboratory, and burst into the room where his young student searchers were working. He shouted to them: "My boys, drop everything and go see Doctor Koch—this man has made a great discovery!" Cohnheim gasped to get his breath.

"But who is this Koch, Herr Professor? We’ve never even heard of him."

"No matter who he is—it is a great discovery, so exact, so simple. It is astounding! This Koch is not a professor, even. . . . He hasn’t even been taught how to do research! He's done it all by himself, complete—there is nothing more to do!"

"But what is this discovery, Herr Professor?"

"Go, I tell you, every one of you, and see for yourselves. It is the most marvelous discovery in the realm of microbes . . . he will make us all ashamed of ourselves. . . . Go——" But by this time, all of them, including Paul Ehrlich, had disappeared through the door.

Seven years before, Pasteur had foretold: "It is within the power of man to make parasitic maladies disappear from the face of the earth. . . ." And when he said these words the