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On the first of February, 1894, Roux of the narrow chest and hatchet face and black skull cap, walked into the diphtheria ward of the Hospital for sick children, carrying bottles of his straw-colored, miracle-working stuff.

In his study in the Institute in the Rue Dutot with a gleam in his eye that made his dear ones forget he was marked for death, there sat a palsied man, who must know, before he died, whether one of his boys had wiped out another pestilence. Pasteur waited for news from Roux. . . . Then too, all over Paris there were fathers and mothers of stricken ones, praying for Roux to hurry—they had heard of this marvelous cure of Doctor Behring. It could almost bring babies back to life, folks said—and Roux could see these people holding out their hands to him. . . .

He got ready his syringes and bottles with the same cold steadiness the farmers had marveled at, long before, in those great days of the anthrax vaccine tests at Pouilly-le-Fort. His assistants, Martin and Chaillou, lighted the little alcohol lamp and hurried to anticipate his slightest order. Roux looked at the helpless doctors, then at the little lead-colored faces and the hands that picked and clutched at the edges of the covers, the bodies twisting to get a little breath. . . .

Roux looked at his syringes—did this serum really save life?

"Yes!" shouted Emile Roux, the human being.

"I don't know—let us make an experiment," whispered Emile Roux, the searcher for truth.

"But, to make an experiment, you will have to withhold the serum from half at least of these children—you may not do that." So said Emile Roux, the man with a heart, and all voices of all despairing parents were joined to the pleading voice of this Emile Roux.

"True, it is a terrible burden," answered the searcher that was Roux, "but just because this serum has cured rabbits, I do not know it will cure babies. . . . And I must know. I must find truth. Only by comparing the number of children