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What was this strange death, brought from the South by cattle never sick with it themselves, and left invisibly in ambush on the fields? Why did it take more than a month for those fields to become dangerous? Why were they only dangerous in the hot summer months?

The whole country was excited about it; there was bad feeling between the meridional cowmen and their colleagues of the North; New York City went into a panic when carloads of stock shipped East for beef began to die in hundreds on the trains. Something must be done! And the distinguished doctors of the Metropolitan Health Board went to work to try to find the microbe cause of the disease. . . .

Meanwhile certain wise old Western cattle growers had a theory—it was just what you would call a plain hunch got from smoking their pipes over disastrous losses of cows—they had a notion that Texas fever was caused by an insect living on the cattle and sucking blood; this bug they called a tick.

The learned doctors of the Metropolitan Board and all of the distinguished horse doctors of the various state Experiment Stations laughed. Ticks cause disease! Any insect cause disease! It was unheard of. It was against all science. It was silly! ". . . A little thought should have satisfied any one of the absurdity of this idea," pronounced the noted authority, Gamgee. This man was up to his nose in the study of Texas fever, and never mentioned a tick; the scientists all over gravely cut up the carcasses of cows and discovered bacilli there (but never saw a tick). "It is the dung spreads it!" said one. "You are wrong, it is the saliva!" said another. There were as many theories as there were scientists. And the cattle kept on dying.

Then, in 1888, Dr. Salmon put Theobald Smith, with Kilborne to help him, and Alexander to clean up after them—saying nothing about ticks Salmon put his entire staff to work