Emergency. On Friday, April 20, Floyd Bennett suffering from influenza flew to the assistance of the Bremen crew. When he arrived in Lake Ste. Agnes, Quebec, he had contracted pneumonia. On
Sunday, April 22, he was rushed to the Jeffrey Hale hospital, Quebec; word was flashed to New York. The New York World and the North American Newspaper Alliance, sponsors of the flight, immediately telephoned Dr. William H. Delaney, superintendent of the hospital, suggesting a consultation, which was gratefully accepted. Dr. Alvan L. Barach, assistant physician at the Presbyterian Hospital, New York, was sent up as consultant, arriving in Quebec with his special apparatus and two tanks of compressed oxygen, Monday, April 23. Bennett's condition was very grave. A large part of the left lung was already involved, the right lung was also affected. In Canada, in the U. S., men & women prayed.
Relief. In Manhattan, John Davison Rockefeller Jr. telephoned Dr. Simon Flexner, director of laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute, asking if something could not be done. Director Flexner telephoned to Quebec. Consultant Barach said: "Well, you might send me some fresh Serum No. I and II. I probably could get it here, but I'd like to have it on hand in case we find it is the proper treatment."
On Tuesday, April 24, Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh flew to Quebec, carrying twelve bottles of anti-pneumonia serum and three white mice, and accompanied by Thomas B. Applegate, private secretary to Mr. Rockefeller. Immediately on his arrival that evening the white mice were inoculated with Floyd Bennett's sputum. Just before midnight the results of the inoculation were published. The bulletin read: "The type of pneumonia from which Bennett is suffering has been disclosed by the inoculation of mice as type III." A simple statement, but it meant the sera were useless, the flight was in vain, the breaks were against Bennett.
Death. On Wednesday morning, April 25, at 20 minutes to 11, Floyd Bennett died.
Damnation. That evening Prime Minister of Quebec Hon. Louis Alexandre Taschereau and Provincial Secretary L. Athanase David spoke long and loud before their public. They characterized the Lindbergh flight as unnecessary, as pure bluff, as U. S. publicity under the guise of charity. They declared there was plenty of anti-pneumonia serum to be had in Quebec. Said Spokesman David:
"But I cannot stomach this way of making profit of a tragic situation under the mask of charity. Here we have everything that is necessary, and we do not need people to come from the United States to bring us serum. We can get along without American doctors be they the most accomplished specialists of that great country.
"The serum—why they did not even try it. It was not the good one. We pass for a country of snows. That is bad enough without calling us a land of ignorants. We have scientists. We have serums."