Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1911 — MODERN CRUSADERS Orho have DIED FIGHTING DISEASE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MODERN CRUSADERS Orho have DIED FIGHTING DISEASE

FEW weeks ago one of the students of that dreaded disease, cerebro • spinal meningitis, made a visit to Ellis Island. He was in search of

more data on that deadly affection. A. few suspected cases were being held in the detention quarters of the Immigration bureau, and he was anxious to see them. So little is known of the disease that every case offers new opportunities for laboratory study. This doctor examined the suspects, went back to his laboratory, and a few days later was stricken by the very malady that he had been fighting for years. The disease that he had been fighting so long had turned upon him. He was dead within forty-eight hours after he was attacked. All the knowledge that he and his colleagues had gained in the tast half dozen years proved useless and helpless in stopping the coming of leath. Simon Flexner, the world's greatMt authority on cerebro-spinal menin- * fitia and kindred diseases, was summoned, and did all that was in his power. Serums that have proven effective in thousands and thousands it cases gave no relief from the steady advance of death. There was ao _ response to its powers in the nerves and muscles of the man who was at last lying in the grip of his enemy. Many New Tork specialists watched by his bedside and fought the destroyer with all the weapons at their command. At the last the malady had claimed its vengeance The work of the dying man and his co-laborers had saved thousands, but in the end he was unable to save i himself. A sort of a superstition has grown op among physicians. The feeling is common among them that the man who specializes on any particular disease is liable to become its victim some time or another in life. His own particular specialty is looked upon as being especially fatal to him if he is ever stricken. Some years ago there was a specialist on mental diseases in St. Louis who was recognised as one of the nation's authorities on insanity. He was a lecturer of more than local note on his favorite subject and his* text books are still found in the libraries of the older physicians. Some time ago he dropped out of sight. His friends speak of him now as one who is dead. He is lost to the world of science Wf which he was once a part. His mind gave way under the strain just as he himself had seen so many minds give way. Insanity, hopeless. stubborn, incurable insanity finally claimed him. The physician has often forfeited his life in his search for the causes that lie back of the most elusive diseases. Something of the same spirit that started the Crusaders of old in their march upon the Saracen is '■ found in the breast of the modern investigator of baffling and obscure diseases. The big battles of the race are now being fought out in the laboratories and in the world’s operating rooms. Every year adds a new martyr to the long list of medical men who have died in their search for the mysteries that lie back of the moat baffling diseases. Many of these martyrs live crippled for the rest of their days by some affection, some:-combination of chemicals or by the aftermath of

some malady that has finally turned upon them. Hopeless wrecks of once strong men live on uselessly and without hope, drawn and twisted by the effects of the X-ray. They were able to cure others with these weird rays, but they gave up their own vitality to do so. Last July Dr. Kassabian of New York died of skin cancer brought on by the X-ray. He had been burned time after time by their mysterious radiance. He had been dying for years. In the years that he was slowly wasting away under the inroads of the malady he was giving relief to thousands. He saw that he was doomed ten years before his death. In common with practically every Xray man in the world he had been suffering at various times from burns caused by this mysterious energy that is given off by the Roentgen ray. He always maintained the greatest secrecy concerning his own condition. In 1902 he came to the conclusion that he was doomed to die sooner or later from the effects of his burns. In 1908 two of his fingers were amputated. Skin cancer had begun to appear upon his left hand and later it began to move slowly up his arm. Last year it was found that the rayinduced cancer had reached the glands under his left arm. Dr. Chalmers da Costa of the Jefferson Medical college was called to New York to perform an operation. The ray Irritated flesh would not heal after the glands were removed. Kassabian, who had fought with cancer so long, was slowly sinking and still another operation was decided upon. The glands on the right side of the chest were removed. It was useless. In the meanwhile the whole of his leftside had become affected and there was nothing that could be done. Thomas A. Edison lost a valuable assistant because of similar burns some years ago. Still another death in the medical profession, brought about by these powerful rays, was that of Dr. Louis Weigel of New York. Dailey, Edison's assistant, died by inches. A cancerous growth appeared upon his left arm and the lower part of this limb was amputated. Slowly his hair, mustache and eyebrows vanished and his skin In many places became hardened and Inflamed. Then |ils right hand and arm began to go. First, four fingers were taken from that member. A futile effort was made to save his upper arm by grafting small pieces of healthy skin upon it from time to time. Finally it, too, was lost and went under the surgeon’s knife in a vain effort to save the sufferer’s life. It was in 1904 that Dailey was added to the list of dead who had died because of their devotion to science. Wteigel died in 1908, after seven operations. His fight against death was one of the longest in the history of those who have gone to their martyrdom because of the X-ray. Some years ago the Curies Isolated radium. Curie himself died as an indirect result of the researches with that dangerous element The immediate cause of his death was his being run down in the streets of London, but his weakened condition because of frightful chest burns from radium was the contributing cause of his decease. The comparative Immunity that the race now has from many diseases was purchased in some instances by the death of one or more investigators. "Yellow Jack" has ceased to be the dreaded thing that It was before the death of Dr Walter Reed. Reed solved the mgatery of the spread of yellow fever and died in its solv-

ing. But there will never be another terrible visitation of “Yellow Jack” in our southern cities. Thirty years ago the south was just beginning to recover from a terrible visitation of thisinfection. It had cost that section of the country millions of dollars and a few thousand lives. First and last “Yellow Jack”

- has hung his saffron banner out ninety times in the United States. There have been ninety of these deadly invasions of this mos-quito-borne disease. Dr. Reed made it certain that there will never be another of any serious proportions. Yellow fever will never call forth the acts of heroism that it did in Louisville, Memphis, New Orleans and other cities In the old "fever belt.” Reed was sent to Cuba in 1900 to help clean up the island. Death rates in all diseases sank steadily under the improved sanitation. Yellow fever remained unchanged. Reed became possessed of the notion that yellow fever was carried from victim to victim by the mosquito.. Reed, Carroll and Lazear offered themselves as experimental subjects. Lazear died and Reed came back to the states in a weakened condition, and finally passed away because of the low vitality that was left him after his battle with the tropical disease. Doctors and surgeons are dying almost every month in the year from cancer, tuberculosis, fevers, blood poisoning or some obscure ailment that attacks when least expected. Most of the research students of medicine understand that they are taking their lives literally in their hands when they enter upon their Btudies. Disease germs lurk in the air about them during most of their waking hours. They literally lie down and get up with death, and their waking moments are taken up with the handling and culturing of germs that may at any time infect them. A single slip may prove fatal. When a doctor starts upon a career of research he understands just what his chances are and accepts them. It is just a year in this month since Dr. Ricketts died in the little American hospital in Mexico City. Ricketts had come into the City of Mexico from Washington for the purpose of studying the germs of typhoid fever. He was one of the first authorities tn typhoid in this country, but his knowledge could not save hjm from the clutches of the typhoid bacilli. You can find men of this stripe in the fever-ridden areas of the tropics, searching for the secret of the sleeping sickness, of the plague and the malignant enteric fevers that sweep thousands into their graves yearly. Armed with serums, quinine, microscopes and testing tubes, they venture into the valleys of the Amazon, the Niger and the Ganges, hoping to add something to the sum total of human knowledge in the matter of diseases. English and Russian scientists can be found in the hill countries on the Tibetan provinces making close and careful studies of goitre and the nameless diseases that slay the Tibetan in his smoky hut American doctors are facing death, and, worse, in the Philippines, making careful investigations of the weird affections that have killed the "little brown brother” for generations. There are laboratories in America that hold more of the concentrated essence of death than all the nitroglycerin works that are scattered over the country. There are rooms in many of the modern institutions that make a specialty of investigation, where every test tube holds enough of sudAn death to decimate g city. Tetanus, the germs of blood poison, meningitis and cultures of diphtheria and the black plague are ranged upon the shelves. Careful scientists whose white aprons and rubber-gloved hands brush extinction at every move, watch the growth and the life history of these assassins, that the race at large may profit by their watching.