Evening star., 1941-02-11
Of Stors, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Laboratory, Field
And Study
Bu Thomas r. Henri.

One July day in 1900 certain Ben
jamin Waterhouse, NJ. D., of Boston,
opened with trembling hands a package
which had just come from a medical
friend in London.
1t contained a book and a piece of
cotton thread a few inches long. The
book, already two years off the press,
was by DR.. Edmund Jenner on the
principles of a new treatment to protect
against smallpox. The thread was I'M
pregnated with Jenner's vaccine.
There had been rumors of this treat
ment in the United States for several
months. The medical fraternity for the
most part. thought it was nonsense. Even
If the process worked, many of them
thought it would be sacrilegious.
Benjamin Waterhouse, however, was
probably the most progressive doctor in
North America at that time. Ten years
before he had been made the first pro-
feSSor OF medicine at Harvard University.
He was not man to exploit an untested
nostrum on a helpless public regardless
of the profit to be reaped-for he was
an ethical physician and gentleman.
So great was his confidence however
that he called in one of his own children,
scratched his arm with a needle, and
inserted the thread in the scratch. In
few days he seemed to have suffered
no bad effects. Then he withdrew The
thread and proceeded to vaccinate with
it his other children and his domestics-
eight in all.
Thus far Benjamin Waterhouse had
displayed ethics which today would be
highly commended by the American
Medical Association-of which he prob
ably would have been president had it
existed in his day. But then, entirely
in keeping with the highest ethics of the
medical profession of the time, he pro-
ceeded to get rich quick"
First he established a price list ANY,
body who could not pay could 90 ahead
and get smallpox for all he cared. The
rate was SIS for one patient. So 50 each for
two in family, and 81 each for three or
more.
He soon realized that he could not
personally vaccinate everybody in the
United States. So he offered the process
for sale-$150 for a single impregnated
thread and quarter of the fees realized
IN fourteen months. 1t would REQUIRE
about that time, he thought for any
other American doctor to get the book
and thread from London.
Benjamin WateFhouse always was solic-
itous for the welfare of the public. He
insisted that all his own patients and
those of any other doctor to whom he
sold the process sign pact not to allow
another physician to examine their arms.
An unscrupulouS medical man. Water
house feared, might be so low as to steal
vaccination scab and start his own
culture of vaccine. 1t might not oe pure.
Word of the new treatment spread
rapidly about New England. Among those
interested was young Dr. LYMAN Spauld-
ing OF Portsmouth. ~ H. He was willing
to pay the $3.50 but thought the TWENTY
five per cent fee split was too much.
Waterhouse should be satisfied, he
thought, with ten per cent.
The Boston professor was astounded at
such greed. He wrote back that if
Spaulding grabbed the opportunity then
he could make big cleanup before
any other doctor within so miles of
Portsmouth could get his hands on a
thread. Every day ne delayed he was
losing money. Warehouses; patience was
ABOUT exhausted and another Portsmouth
doctor was negotiating with him.
Another of his customers was DR..
Josiah Bartlett, jr. of Stratham. N II
son OF signer of the Declaration of IN
dependence. The strange fee-splitting
pact, and the bond which all patients
were required to sign. has lust been
found by DR.. Morris Leikind. custodian
OF medical books at the Library of
Congress, in the Josiah Bartlett papers
which are preserved there.
The Smithsonian Institution has Just
received from the Academy of Sciences
at Moscow two tiny bits of rock which
were allowed to leave Russia only by
special act of the Central Soviet.
They are bits of two meteorites, or
shooting stars, both of which were
seen to hit the earth. and the ma ior
portions of which are retained in the
large collection of these celestial visitors
which is being built up in Moscow. One
represented a type which E P. Hender-
son, Smithsonian mineralogiSt. was
especially eager to subject to chemical
analysis.
The Soviet Academy Of Science had
not previously exchanged meteorites,
but the legislative body consented to
this on the academy'S recommendation.
Specimens of American meteorites had
been sent in exchange for these.