The Great Influenza (64 page)

In fact, what Avery accomplished was a classic of basic science. He started his search looking for a cure for pneumonia and ended up, as Burnet observed, 'opening' the field of molecular biology.'

Watson, Crick, Delbruck, Luria, Medawar, and Burnet all won the Nobel Prize.

Avery never did.

Rockefeller University (the former Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research) did name a gate after him, the only such honor accorded to anyone. And the National Library of Medicine has produced a series of online profiles of prominent scientists; it made Avery the first to be so honored.

Oswald Avery was sixty-seven years old when he published his paper on 'the transforming principle.' He died eleven years later in 1955, two years after Watson and Crick unfolded DNA's structure. He died in Nashville where he had gone to live to be near his brother, his family. Dubos compared his death to that of Welch, in 1934, and quoted Simon Flexner on Welch's exit from the stage: 'While his body suffered, his mind struggled to maintain before the world the same placid exterior that had been his banner and his shield. Popsy, the physician who had been so greatly beloved, died as he had lived, keeping his own counsel and essentially alone.'

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I
N THE FIRST YEARS
after the pandemic, Paul Lewis continued to head the Henry Phipps Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.

Yet Lewis was not a happy man. He was one of those who continued to believe that
B. influenzae
caused the disease and continued to work on it after the epidemic passed. There was irony in that, since he had initially been reluctant to embrace its etiological role, suspecting instead a filterable virus. Perhaps the chief reason for his stubbornness was his own experience. He had not only found the bacillus with consistency, but he had produced a vaccine that seemed to work. True, the navy had administered a vaccine prepared according to his methods to several thousand men and it had proven ineffective, but he had not made that vaccine himself. A smaller batch that he had personally prepared and tested (during the peak of the epidemic, not in its later stages when many vaccines seemed to be working only because the disease itself was weakening) had given solid evidence of effectiveness. Only three of sixty people who received the vaccine developed pneumonia, and none died; a control group had ten pneumonias and three deaths.

Those results deceived him. In the past he had not always made the right scientific judgment (no investigator does) but this may have been his first significant scientific error. And it seemed to mark the beginning of a downhill slope for him.

That was not obvious at first. He had already built an international reputation. The German scientific journal
Zeitschrift fur Tuberkulose
translated and reprinted his work. In 1917 he was invited to give the annual Harvey Lecture on tuberculosis, a great honor; Rufus Cole, for example, would not receive that invitation for another decade. Eighty-five years later, Dr. David Lewis Aronson, a scientist (whose father, a prize-winning scientist, had worked in the best European laboratories and considered Lewis the smartest man he ever met and gave his son Lewis's name) recalled reading that speech: 'You could see Lewis's mind working, the depth of it, and vision, going well beyond what was going on at the time.'

Lewis's views had broadened indeed. His interests now included mathematics and biophysics, and, with no resources of his own, he asked Flexner to 'arrange for the support' of a physicist Lewis wanted to lure into medicine to examine fluorescent dyes and 'the disinfectant power of light and the penetrating power of light for animal tissues.' Flexner did so, and Flexner continued to be impressed by Lewis's own work, replying by return mail when Lewis sent him a paper, saying that he would publish it in the
Journal of Experimental Medicine,
calling it 'interesting and important.'

Yet Lewis's life after the war began pulling him away from the laboratory, frustrating him. Henry Phipps, the U.S. Steel magnate who had given his name to the institute Lewis headed, had not endowed it generously. Lewis's own salary had risen well enough, from $3,500 a year when he started in 1910 to $5,000 just before the war. Flexner still considered him vastly underpaid and saw to it that, immediately after the war, the University of California at Berkeley offered him a professorship. Lewis declined, but Penn raised his salary to $6,000, a substantial income at that time.

But if his own salary was more than adequate, he needed to fund an entire institute, even if a small one. He needed money for centrifuges, glassware, heating, not to mention 'dieners' (the word still in use for technicians) and young scientists. He needed to raise the money for all that himself. As a result Lewis more and more found himself drawn into the social milieu of Philadelphia, raising money, being charming. More and more he was becoming a salesman, selling both the institute and himself. He hated it. He hated the time it took from the laboratory, the drain of his energies, the parties. And the country was in the midst of a deep recession, with four million soldiers suddenly thrown back onto the job market, with the government no longer building ships and tanks, with Europe desolate and unable to buy anything. Raising money was more than just difficult.

In 1921 the University of Iowa approached him. They wanted to become a first-class research institution, and they wanted him to run the program, to build the institution. The state would supply the money. Flexner was more than just a mentor to Lewis, and Lewis confided in him that the Iowa job seemed 'heavy, safe and of limited inspiration. You know very well that I do not thrive on routine.' And at Phipps, 'Some of the work underway has great potential I believe' . You will see that I am trying to convince myself that I have a right to gamble here as against a rather dull safe outlook at Iowa City. A word from you would be much appreciated.'

Flexner advised him to accept the offer: 'All I have heard of the medical situation at Iowa City is favorable,' a pretty sharp contrast to the [situation] in Philadelphia. It is definite and has the elements of permanency' . I have no doubt under the influence of your vigorous guidance, the department (although quite large) over which you would preside would become so notable that the State would stand back of you in any enlargement.'

He did not tell Lewis how well he thought the job might suit him, how extraordinary his gifts for a job like that were. But Flexner did tell a senior colleague that Lewis 'might really come to exercise a real influence in medical teaching and research.' There was perhaps some of what Welch had in him, that Lewis had 'quite unusual gifts of exposition.' He had broad knowledge, perhaps he even leaked knowledge, and, whether he realized it or not, he could inspire. Indeed, Flexner believed he could 'be master of the field.'

The University of Pennsylvania countered the offer: it gave him a new title, raised his salary to $8,000, guaranteed it for five years, and guaranteed funding for the institute itself for two years. He stayed. Flexner congratulated 'you and the University especially on your new honor. Will the new chair add to your University responsibility?'

It would. Partly for that reason Lewis remained restless. He had rejected the Iowa position because, though it might allow him to build a major institution, it would keep him out of the laboratory. Now he found himself in much the same situation at Penn. He detested maneuvering with or around deans and he continued to play the role of social creature. Scientists were the new thing, Faustian figures able to create worlds and fashionable to show off on the Main Line. Lewis hated being shown off. There was tension at home with his wife as well. How much of that came from his research frustrations, how much because his wife liked the Philadelphia society that he wanted no part of, how much because his wife simply wanted more of him, it is impossible to know.

One research project in particular seemed to be going well, and he wanted to attend to it, and give up everything else. He envied not only Avery's ability to concentrate on one thing but also his opportunity to do so. For Lewis everything seemed to press upon him. Indeed, everything seemed ready to explode.

In 1922 Iowa offered him the position again. This time he accepted. He felt a responsibility to leave Phipps in good shape and recruited Eugene Opie from Washington University to replace him. Opie had if anything an even greater reputation than his own.

Flexner had always respected Lewis, yet there had always been a gap between them. They had been getting closer. At one point Flexner wrote him, 'Some time do let me take a little trouble for you.' Lewis confided in return, 'You have stood in the light of 'father' to me.' Now, when Opie agreed to replace Lewis at Phipps, Flexner seemed to see Lewis in a new light, capable not only as a scientist but as someone who could play another game well, telling him, 'Opie surprised me. I supposed him a fixture in St. Louis. If you prepared the way for so good a man at the Phipps Institute, you may well feel gratified.'

Lewis did not feel gratified. He remained restless and discontented. What he really wanted was to be shut of everything, everything except the laboratory. Perhaps without quite realizing it, he had been moving toward a crisis. Again he told Flexner that what he really wanted more than anything was to work at his laboratory bench. He was shut of Philadelphia. Now he had to get himself shut of Iowa.

In January 1923 he wrote Flexner, 'It is quite clear to me today that I am entitled again for a short time at least to cultivate my personal interests' . I am giving up my place here and all of my plans for a future in Philadelphia' . I have written to President Jessop, of the University of Iowa, telling him of my change of plan and that that is also in the discard' . I am going to try my best to develop the opportunity for a year of study in some place as far removed from any question of 'affairs or position' as possible' . I cannot make it too plain that for the coming year I am seeking no position in the conventional sense of the word. What I really want is' the rehabilitation of a more or less vacant mind.'

He was quitting everything, walking away from position, prestige, and money, walking into the wilderness with no guarantee of anything, stripping himself naked at the age of forty-four with a wife and two children. He was free.

* 

Where he had been happiest in his life, where he had done the best science, had been at the Rockefeller Institute. The institute had created a Division of Animal Pathology in Princeton, close to Philadelphia. Theobald Smith, the same man who had rejected Welch's offer to become the first head of the Rockefeller Institute itself, had left Harvard and now headed this division. Smith had also been Lewis's first mentor, and had recommended him so many years before to Flexner. Lewis explored with Smith the possibility of going to Princeton. Smith first wanted assurances that Lewis wanted 'to go to work again and' that all this advertising business had not gone to [his] head.' Lewis eagerly gave them.

Flexner had urged him to take the Iowa job but replied, 'I shall be rejoiced to see you return to the lab where you so naturally belong and in which you will do your best, most lasting, and effective work. It seems to me a crying pity that men who have given years to the necessary preparation for a lab career should be so ruthlessly drawn away from it and made to fill executive positions.' He also told Lewis that Smith was 'very pleased with the prospect of having you associated with him again.'

Lewis asked for no salary whatsoever, just full access to the laboratories for a year. Flexner gave him $8,000, his salary at Phipps, and a budget for laboratory equipment, filing cabinets, 540 animal cages for breeding and experimenting, and three assistants. He told Lewis he would expect nothing whatsoever from him for the year, and then they could talk again about the future.

Lewis was ecstatic: 'To start with Dr. Smith again on any possible basis, takes me back to 1905 - on I hope certainly a new higher level'. You will not find me lacking in effort'. I am most fortunate and happy in being able to regard myself as entirely in the hands of you two men who, without distinction, and excepting only my parents, have given me the means and the education and the direction. Few have such a chance to renew their youth. My only hope is that I continue to deserve your confidence.'

* 

Princeton then was still surrounded by farms and countryside. It was peaceful, almost bucolic. The Rockefeller facility was not far from the campus of Princeton University, which was still transforming itself from the finishing school for gentlemen that F. Scott Fitzgerald described to the intellectual center that it would not fully become until a decade later, when Flexner's brother Abraham started the Institute for Advanced Study with Einstein as its first member. But if the setting was bucolic, if crops grew and assorted animals (not simply guinea pigs or rabbits but cattle, pigs, and horses) grazed only yards from the laboratories, the Rockefeller part of Princeton brewed intensity. Smith was continuing to produce world-class work. Just being around him energized Lewis. For the first time since he left the Rockefeller Institute, he felt at home. Yet he was alone. His wife and children stayed in Philadelphia. He was alone to work, alone to go to the laboratory in the middle of the night, alone with his thoughts.

In nearly a year, however, he produced nothing. Flexner and he did discuss his future. He was forty-five years old. His next move would likely be his last one. He could still return to the University of Pennsylvania if he chose. He did not so choose, telling Flexner, 'I can only repeat that I am free of any entanglement there, even of sentiment.' The University of Iowa had also extended its offer once again and once again raised the salary. But what he wanted was to stay at Rockefeller. He had made little progress on the tuberculosis project he had brought with him from Philadelphia, but, more importantly, he had, he assured himself as much as Flexner, rejuvenated himself. He informed Flexner that, despite the higher salary at Iowa, 'My only interest in 'position' is [here].'