Medicine: Low Life

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But too much must not yet be expected of bacteriophagy. At the very end of his treatise, Dr. d'Herelle warns: "In the prophylactic and therapeutic use of the bacteriophage there is a vast field for commercial exploitation. This has already begun. I cannot witness it without apprehension. . . . Too often, commercial firms mislead both physicians and the public by clever quotations (clever in the sense that they avoid conflict with the law) tending to make it appear that such and such a scientist supervises their products, or even controls them. I now declare that I am, and will always remain, a stranger to all 'commercial enterprises. I may go further in this direction and state that every time that I have treated a patient it has been done solely from a scientific motive." The workroom obscurity which Dr. d'Herelle maintains, Professor George Hathorn Smith of Yale would like. Before Dr. d'Herelle's first brochures relating to bacteriophagy appeared in 1917, Professor Smith, bacteriologist and immunologist, felt that "our ideas concerning immunity were entirely inadequate." There seemed "injustice in so organizing this universe that of all living creatures the one with the greatest parasitic tendencies should itself be free of parasites." Dr. d'Herelle's work suggested an explanation. Professor Smith became his translator, really his collaborator. Besides their confluence of research, both have the same reluctance against publicity, will not release their photographs for the acquaintance of a respecting world. The device in their escutcheons might be: The work's significance, not its associations.

Dentists

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