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it was, this blood!)—the other was the strange notion (not a new one) that there must exist chemicals to wipe invading microbes out of animals and men—without hurting the men or the animals.
“I will find a chemical to cure diphtheria!” he cried, and inoculated herds of guinea-pigs with cultivations of virulent diphtheria bacilli. They got sick, and as they got sicker he shot various chemical compounds into them. He tried costly salts of gold, he tried naphthylamine, he tested more than thirty different strange or common substances. He believed innocently because these things could kill microbes in a glass tube without damaging the tube, they would also hit the diphtheria bacilli under a guinea-pig’s hide without ruining the guinea-pig. But alas, from the slaughter house of dead and dying guinea-pigs his laboratory was, you would suppose he would have seen there was little to choose between the deadly microbes and his equally murderous cures. . . . Nevertheless, being a poet, Behring did not have too great a reverence for facts; the hecatombs of corpses went on piling up, but they failed to shake his faith in some marvelous unknown remedy for diphtheria hidden somewhere among the endless rows of chemicals in existence. Then, in his enthusiastic—but random —search he came upon the tri-chloride of iodine.
Under the skins of several guinea-pigs he shot a dose of diphtheria bacilli sure to kill them. In a few hours these microbes began their work; the spot of the injection became swollen, got ominously hot, the beasts began to droop—then, six hours after the fatal dose of the bacilli, Behring shot in his iodine tri-chloride. . . . “It is no good, once more,” he muttered. The day passed with no improvement and the next morning the beasts began to go into collapses. Solemnly he put the guinea-pigs on their backs, then poked them with his finger to see if they could still scramble back on their feet. . . . “If the guinea-pig can still get up when you poke him, there may be yet a chance for him,” explained Behring to his amazed assistants. What a test that was—think of a doctor having a