"Quack!" the portrait of a experimentalist

CHAPTER I He was lord of life and death

Not absolutely, he told himself with a sobriety acquired by experience. Accidents, virulent infections, malignant growths—these and many other causes of death would remain, beside the inevitable wearing out of the bodily machine. But not so did death arrive for the majority. It arrived as the final result of some ailment which had progressively reduced the power of resistance, the immedi¬ ate cause being a lack of sufficient vitality to carry on the fight: and that he could prevent.

He looked at the glass tubes in a leather case which lay on the table before him. They contained a respite for all who were threatened with imminent extinction because they were weak. The consumptive, the rickety, the debilitated by imprudence or disease, the exhausted after operations— above all, from his point of view, martyrs to certain obscure functional derangements—if he published this, his second discovery, few of them need die prematurely.

But some of them might die prematurely—exceedingly prematurely—through misuse of the remedy. He frowned. Pictures formed in his mind of the stages which had brought him to this crisis of indecision.

He was sitting in the dog-cart beside his father, who had taken him out on his afternoon round. They were returning home across the heath. Overhead the sky was clear, palely blue: but in the hollows and among the trees the dusk was gathering. There was a tang in the air, an acrid but pleasant odour of decaying leaves and wood-smoke. Clop-clop, clop-clop, went the mare’s hoofs on the hard road.

The dusk had settled in Windbach High Street, a purplebrown haze punctured here and there with pools of yellow light from the shop-windows and the feeble gas-lamps. His father twisted the blood-mare skilfully into the asphalted walk on which fronted the grocer’s.

“Jump down, Harding, and ask Parkinson to give you a pound of rice.”

He went into the shop.

“Pound of rice—yes, Master Harding. There you are. Now, you tell your pa, with my comps., that there is more nourishment in that package than in a pound of beefsteak. Don’t you forget that, Master Harding.”

He told his father, without comps., and received for answer, “Rubbish!”

“Isn’t it true?”

“True enough as far as it goes,” responded the doctor.

Clop-clop, clop-clop, went the mare’s hoofs again.

44 You mean it isn’t all the truth?”

Dr. Fullar glanced at his thirteen-year-old son. “The two kinds of nourishment are not the same. Parkinson ignores that. He is only right to this extent—weight for weight, there is more nourishment of certain kinds in rice than there is of other kinds in beef. But the beef has the higher food-value.”

“What does food-value mean?”

“Heat-producing power.”

“What has heat to do with it?”

“You are not old enough yet to understand that. If you are still interested a couple of years hence, read ‘Hutchison on Diet.’ You will find it in the shelves.”

A few days later, deep in Hutchison, he became conscious that his father was standing over him. He looked up.

“What is a calorie?”

“I told you you were too young to understand,” replied the doctor. “WTiy aren’t you at football?”

“I’m going in half an hour. I’m playing for the Church Lads this afternoon. But I wish you would tell me what a calorie is.”

“I am not going to stuff your head with theories at your age,” growled the doctor.

He relented in the evening, however. After dinner, over the dessert, he gave his son a lecture on nutrition.

The rich graining of the Spanish mahogany dining-table, with its mirror-like surface; the wavering flames of the candles; the translucent ruby of the wine in his father’s glass, the deep dull crimson of it in the decanter; the glit¬ ter of the silver—branched-candlesticks, fruit-dishes from one of which he took almonds and raisins absent-mindedly while his father talked, the chased coaster in which the decanter stood . . .

“Three kinds of materials are necessary to the body: those from which it builds up flesh and tissues; those from which it derives heat to keep up its temperature and the energy of the muscles; and those which go to form the bones and the teeth. Different sorts of food contain one or more of these materials in varying proportions. All foods, however, are combustible—that is, they contain heat-producing material; their respective values to the body are

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in proportion to the amount of it. A calorie is a unit of heat-producing power—exactly, the amount of heat neces¬ sary to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water by one degree centigrade—and food-values are reckoned accord¬ ingly. Thus, if you were to burn a pound of dried beef you would find that it produced about 450 calories, whereas a pound of rice would only produce one-third as much. That is the measure of their value as foods. Therefore, it is pos¬ sible to determine offhand whether any given scale of diet is sufficient by adding up the number of calories it contains. About three thousand are required per day for an adult doing manual labour. Less suffices for women and children, and those who work with their heads instead of their hands.”

“Then it doesn’t matter what a man eats, as long as his food contains a sufficient number of calories?”

“Theoretically, no, provided the proper proportions of the three kinds of materials are maintained. But practically it makes a great difference ...”

Harding, however, was not interested in the practical aspects of the question. “Parkinson only eats bread and nuts and fruit, and he gets on all right.”

“No doubt, no doubt. He has accustomed himself to a diet of that kind.”

“Suppose you were to accustom yourself to it—would you be as well and strong as you are now?”

The doctor laughed as he refilled his glass from the decanter. “Scientifically, I must believe that I should. But I don’t intend to try. How would you like it if I were to cut off your meat, and make you eat nuts instead? What would Penny and Elsie say if they were forbidden sweets and told to make up with pudding?”

“They’d say a lot,” replied Harding feelingly. Penelope and Elsie were his sisters. But, much as he disliked nuts— “I shouldn’t mind going without meat for a time, just long enough to see if it’s true.”

“If what’s true?”

“All this you’ve been telling me.”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the startled doctor.

Was it a year later that he had been found deep in Hutchi¬ son again? His father had tchk-tchked and passed on. A few days after, he noticed that Harding had got hold of another authority on dietetics, and inquired sarcastically:

“Assimilated all that Hutchison has to tell you?”

“I can’t say that. I was looking for something he doesn’t tell me.”

The doctor drew down shaggy brows. “What?”

“Has anybody proved this caloric theory?”

“Certainly.”

“How?”

“By experiment. You have not read Hutchison very carefully. He tells you about it.”

“Not what I mean. Has anybody tried to find a diet which would contain the right proportions of the different kinds of food, and the requisite number of calories, but wouldn’t nourish properly?”

“Why should they?”

“To prove whether the theory is true.”

“How would that prove it?”

“Well, if you made a list of all the possible combinations, and then fed a man on each of them for a month, and saw whether it was all the same to him, you would know.”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Dr. Fullar for the second time.

A clear, bright day in spring. After morning school he

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had gone up to his study. Percy the Nav was filling the coal-box, and pointed with a grin to a packet on the table.

“I found that in the lodge, Master Fullar. It come by the second post. I thought p’r’aps you’d like to ’ave it now.”

“Good lad, Perce,” said Harding. According to rules, letters were not given out until late in the afternoon.

He ripped the cover off the package and found a copy of the current issue of the British Medical Journal. A leaf was turned down. A foreign scientist had carried out experiments on the lines he had sketched, and the results were not in accordance with the caloric theory. It was even possible to construct a diet on the accepted scale which hardly nourished at all. Scrawled in the margin, in Dr. Fullar’s handwriting, was: “What now?”

Harding took pains over his answer. “I am not sure that I understand your question, but if you want to know what I suppose to be the cause of this, I should say it might be because some kinds of food contain unknown substances which are necessary for digestion, while those which have been found not to nourish by themselves don’t.”

Back at home for the holidays, having tea with Penny and Elsie, his father being out on his round.

“Dad is awfully proud of that letter you wrote him, Harry.”

“He has been showing it to everyone.”

“He says you have a flair for the theoretical, whatever that means.”

The inward glow, the dawn of a belief that he was ex¬ ceptionally endowed.

He told his father that he wished to go to Cambridge and train for research.

“Well, Harding, you certainly appear to have a talent for it, and it is the road to honours and all that sort of thing. But it’s a chancy game, and, as a rule, there is very little money in it. You will have to be one of the lucky few to make even half as much as I do here, and that you could have as soon as you are qualified. I have always looked forward to your being my partner, dear boy—to have you associated with me for a few years, perhaps until you marry; then I would turn the practice over to you entirely. It is an opportunity such as few young men get—a certain living, and almost certainly a good deal more. I have done well—very well, many people would say, when my invest¬ ments are taken into account. And Windbach is growing. However, we will think about it.”

The schools at Cambridge. Professor Colstead on the value of negative indications. “A long series of experiments was necessary in order to prove that certain foods of high caloric value were not by themselves capable of maintaining life. Hopkins, basing a further series of experiments upon the negative indication, has demonstrated the existence of at least three substances which he calls accessory food factors. Professor Funk confirms this. He suggests the term Vitamines, a supply of these substances being unquestionably necessary for animal life. It is not yet known what they are: they have still to be isolated and identified ...”

A thrill of pride, accompanied by a stab of envy, tiny but sharp. He wrote to his father: “The discovery of Vitamines confirms what I thought. Don’t you think the isolation of them would be a good problem for me to begin on when I go down?”

The father could not but be proud of his son. He wrote back: “It seemed to me at the time that your conjecture

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was ingenious, and I am gratified at its being confirmed. But whether the field is a promising one, I am not competent to judge. As a practitioner, I should like to think that your researches might have some useful result. Is that the case here? Even if you succeeded in isolating these substances and determining their composition, how would therapeutics be advanced? As I read Hopkins and Funk, whatever these substances may be chemically, a sufficient quantity of them is provided by any mixed diet, and nothing is gained by increasing it. Where, then, is the practical value, actual or prospective, in this discovery? I do not wish to discourage you, but as you ask me, I must confess that I see none.”

He had not been discouraged—far from it. He had applied himself to work with a greater zest than ever, and, as far as he could, pursued the phantom called for con¬ venience Vitamine B. His paper on Energy and Food- Values attracted attention. The name of Henry Harding Fullar was known in the scientific world before he left Cambridge with a full share of academical honours.

His father’s face, surprised and pleased, when he an¬ nounced his intention of doing a year’s hospital work before embarking on research. “I may want to practise later on. If I succeed in running Vitamine B to earth, and it turns out as tricky as these injections of glandular juices—have you read about Vassale and Gley’s experiments with the thyroid?—I think I should want to go into practice—as a consultant, of course.”

“There is nothing like practical experience, my boy. I daresay it can be arranged that you should be able to do a certain amount of laboratory work. And, by the way—I am going to make the allowance four hundred.”

“But you have a partner, now, dad—and beside, I shall get a salary.”

“You won’t get more than a hundred or so, and I don’t wish you to feel like a pauper. I have been selling some land—the field behind Cartwright’s—you remember?—and several plots on the Chester Road. Values have gone up enormously since I bought, and I still hold a number of other plots.” The old man had been very generous.

Then the bitter memories began.

The grey afternoon on which, in his room in the Institute of Organic Research, he satisfied himself that the substance which he had isolated from a glandular secretion was new to science, and one of the immediate sources of energy—it seemed, probably the principal one. The intoxication of this achievement after five years of unremitting labour, and the blind fashion in which he had walked into what proved to be a cul-de-sac with a trap in it. He had been sure that the new substance was intimately related to Vitamine B— that Vitamine B must enter into the composition of it, or at any rate be necessary to its production by the cell-labora¬ tories of the gland: and he knew that his glory would be far greater if he could link his discovery to the elusive Vitamine, the nature of which had baffled all investigators.

A conversation with his assistant, after months spent in attempts to establish the supposed connection. Many experi¬ ments had been made in the way of administering the new substance to animals, and the results had shown an increase of energy; but the scope of these trials had been limited. Harding had decided that he must give up the quest of the Vitamine, and extend the trials accordingly. He happened to notice that his assistant, who was a con¬ sumptive type, looked unusually well.

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“Your health seems to have improved, Balmforth. I don’t remember that you have had so much colour since you came to the institute.”

“You can bet your boots on that,” replied Balmforth, who had a slangy style in casual conversation. “I’ve been taking Jumpolene.”

“Taking what?”

“Well, sir, you haven’t given it a name, so that’s what we call it in the lab.”

Harding frowned. “Somewhat risky, Balmforth. We don’t know all about it yet.”

“We know enough to be able to say that it’s the most wonderful discovery ever made,” retorted the enthusiastic assistant. “When are you going to let it off on the public? Half the fellows in the Institute are wild to get it now.”

Harding saw that Balmforth had been talking as well as acting unwisely, and reproved him. In the course of the following week, he learned that his discovery was known outside. The pictures became confused.

He had sought advice from one of the governing body. He found that Sir William knew all about it, had only been waiting for a word from him to offer congratulations.

“You wanted to make sure, of course. Quite right.”

Harding explained the position.

“Let me have a report. I will show it to Westleigh, and we will go into the matter with you.”

Lord Westleigh was on the Council. He had been a great scientist in his day, but he was not perhaps the best man to advise as to publication, because in his day there were no lively little dailies with a million circulation. He came, saw some experiments performed, pronounced the evidence good enough, and at the next meeting brought the matter before the Council. Another member of it was Sir Davis Garstin, one of the royal physicians. The two were old friends.

Sir Davis had heard of the new discovery outside, and wanted to know what had caused the delay in announcing it officially. He was annoyed. The Institute existed for the advancement of the healing art. It was claimed that this new substance had a therapeutic value. Was the evidence good? If so, what was the objection to publication?

The old fool! No one had the pluck to point out that the Institute did not exist primarily for the advancement of the healing art; it existed for the advancement of science, of which healing is only a branch. Lord Westleigh hummed and ha’d, said that the evidence was certainly good. A statement was drawn up for the Press. Harding’s request that the new substance should be named Fullamin, in com¬ pliment to his father, was acceded to.

He had had doubts at the time—yes, he had. But he had supposed that these older men, who in any case were respon¬ sible, must know better than he. The congratulations which poured in upon him after publication banished his doubts. Outwardly he had borne himself modestly enough, but inwardly he had walked on air, been arrogantly sure that henceforward his position in the scientific world was unassailable.

How well he remembered that reporter—a pasty-faced young fellow with dull brown eyes and more than the assurance of a commercial traveller!

“Now, Dr. Fullar-”

“Mr. Fullar. Be careful of that in your article.”

“But you are a doctor?”

“Yes. But we distinguish. I do not practise, so I call myself ‘Mr.’ ”

“Thanks. Now, I suppose we may say this discovery of yours is important?”

“Yes, I think you may say that. Its importance lies chiefly, for the present, in the fact that it marks a definite advance in our knowledge of the chemistry of energyproduction.”

“But people can take the stuff, can’t they?”

“Yes, under medical advice.”

“It won’t do them harm, anyhow?”

“Not in such doses as would be prescribed. I don’t know that it would in larger doses, but I have not fully explored that possibility yet.”

“Will it cure indigestion?”

Harding smiled. “ ‘Indigestion’ is a general term for a number of functional disorders. It is possible that Fullamin might be of benefit in some of them.”

“In fact, it will do good?”

“It might do you good,” said Harding, who wanted to get rid of him. He stepped closer and turned down an under¬ eyelid. “I thought so. You are anaemic.”

“Always was. I get no good of my food. I’ve tried everything—tonics, patent medicines—no use.”

“Well, try this. I will give you these three capsules. I cannot spare more at present, but these will be sufficient for you to find out whether it does you good. Take one now, another tomorrow, and the third the day after.”

“I say—thank you awfully. Try it on myself, what? This is a great stunt. Am I the first?”

“Not quite. My assistant here, Mr. Balmforth, was the first human subject for experiment. He will take you round the Institute, if you like.”

It was a most unfortunate mistake, handing the fellow over to Balmforth. Balmforth lacked the sense of propor¬ tion. He, Harding, had been too superior to talk to an ignorant cub like that: it had not occurred to him that he was just as ignorant of popular journalism as the reporter was of scientific matters.

The article came out the next day but one, and began:

“ ‘If you can’t stop those monkey tricks, get out of here,’ growled the sub-editor.

‘But I couldn’t stop trying to stand on my head, and jumping over chairs, and playfully lifting a bigger fellow than myself and using him as a dumb-bell. The editor had sent me the day before to interview Mr. Harding Fullar, the discoverer of Fullamin, at the Institute of Organic Research, and Mr. Fullar had given me three doses of Fullamin. I have only taken two, and I feel like Sandow and Hackenschmidt rolled in one. What I shall be when Fullamin is on the market and I can get a regular supply . .

It was nauseous nonsense. Harding was quoted, with the reservations left out. “ ‘I suppose we may say this dis¬ covery of yours is important?’ ‘Yes, I think you may say that,’ replied Mr. Fullar modestly. He prefers to be called ‘Mr.’ instead of ‘doctor,’ although he is an L.R.C.P. as well as a B.Sc. ‘It marks a definite advance,’ he went on. ‘Will it cure anaemia, for instance?’ ‘In many cases,’ replied the doctor, suddenly seizing me and making a lightning-quick examination of my eyelid.”

Balmforth’s extravagant laudations of Harding and his achievements were quoted as if they had been uttered by Harding. He felt as if a gross caricature of himself were being held up to public derision. He sought the advice of Sir William as to how he could put himself right; he

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was told that he had made a mistake in not handing over a written statement to the reporter, and whatever he tried to do now by way of correcting that young man’s absurdities would only make things worse.

Then the memories became very bitter.

The article caused a sensation. Its mis-statements were widely quoted as authoritative, and even further distorted. The public demanded Fullamin, would not be persuaded out of the belief that it was a cure for all the ills of the flesh. Harding was reproved for his imprudence by two members of the Council, and although the reproof was couched in mild terms, it carried a sting. His colleagues and friends chaffed him, and he was made to feel that the profession disapproved of the way in which his discovery had been launched on the world.

Worse was to come. Even before the storm broke, he had discovered that the apparent remedial value of Fulla¬ min was largely illusive. More extended tests showed that, while the bodily machine responded for a time, it was with a lessening degree of response, and beyond a certain point there were symptoms of toxication.

He requested that a word of caution should be issued by the Council. This was done, but it came too late. A leading London physician wrote to the papers asserting that Ful¬ lamin was merely a muscular stimulant, and that its discontinuance produced the reaction characteristic of stimulants: the extra energy temporarily generated was paid for in languor afterwards. Other doctors said they had found the same thing. Harding could not deny that it was so in some cases. Then Sir Davis Garstin ratted. In a letter to The Times he declared that he had been misled. He had administered Fullamin in several cases, and it had no effect at all. This brought Dr. Fullar into the field. In a vigorous reply he said that if Sir Davis had failed to find any result from the administration of Fullamin, the reason must be that the bodily energies of the patient were so nearly normal that the effect was imper¬ ceptible. Remedies were for people who were ill, not for imaginary invalids. He suggested that the reaction which other observers had noted might be avoided by gradually diminishing the dose. The intemperate tone of the letter grated on Harding’s sensitiveness, but he was grateful for the suggestion, and acted upon it. Finding that it answered, he went to Windbach to see his father and tell him so.

A poignant picture.

The polished surface of the dining-table glittered specklessly as of yore, but the older fashion according to which ladies left before the cloth was removed had given place to the more sociable modern custom. Penelope was married now, to the son of a local magnate: but Elsie stayed while Dr. Fullar sipped his port and talked. She was engaged to Fields, the partner.

“Don’t be discouraged, Harding. You may have an up¬ hill road for a time, but you are on a new track. All that can properly be said against you is that the remedial value of Fullamin was over-estimated at first. I don’t know that you are to blame for that. Persevere. Take no notice of humbugs like Garstin. Garstin, indeed! He went through the schools with me, you know. Always a time-serving toady, alert to be on the popular side. Pass the port.”

“You have had quite enough, papa,” put in Elsie. “You have said several times that two glasses ought to be your limit, and Charles thinks so too.”

“Charles be hanged!” exclaimed the wrathful doctor.

“Am I to have young men dictating to me? Let Charles attend to the patients.”

“I don’t want you to become one of them, papa dear.”

Harding thought that Elsie was right in counselling moderation. His father had aged greatly in the last few years. There were tell-tale signs—irritability, want of appetite, shortness of breath, and, after dinner, distension of the veins in the face. Before he went back to London, Harding had a talk with Fields.

Fields said there was an aneurism on the arch of the aorta. “I have told him several times, after his fits of giddiness, that he ought to take things more easily. He won’t change his habits, you know.”

A bundle of confused recollections, recalled pell-mell.

The accumulation of adverse opinion. The realisation that the majority of medical men were cold-shouldering Fullamin, either because they were indifferent as to new remedies, or because they thought this one too doubtful. His resentment against fate when he read the report of an inquest at which it came to light that a large dose of Fullamin had been administered shortly before death supervened— not traceably as a consequence, the patient being in the last stage of exhaustion from loss of blood: the coroner was careful to say that. But post hoc, ergo propter hoc, is a valid maxim in relation to the popular mind—and, unhap¬ pily, as to the semi-scientific mind too often. He thought that day that his triumph had petered out in smoke, that there was nothing left but a little stink which would cling to him all his life.

The ray of hope when a French scientist announced that the absorption of Fullamin was markedly increased, and the harmful after-effects diminished, when it was administered along with a substance belonging to the pyramidine group. The suggestion made to him that, the credit of the Institute being involved, he ought to follow this up. The quarrel between Lord Westleigh and Sir Davis Garstin on the sub¬ ject, as a consequence of which the latter resigned from the Board. His consenting to do what the Board wished, much against his will—because Vitamine B was almost certainly connected in some way with the pyramidine group, and at the time he desired to consign practical prob¬ lems to the devil and occupy himself with the theoretic.

The most galling incident of all, at the next meeting of the British Medical Association. The president, physician, deplored in his address “the tendency among those engaged in research to announce their discoveries prematurely, especially when a therapeutic value is claimed for them which is subsequently disproved. The public are not alto¬ gether to be blamed if they fail to distinguish the differ¬ ence between these methods and those of the advertising quack.”

Harding’s inward rage had no bounds. He had laboured unceasingly for years at a task of the greatest complexity. His discovery constituted a step in bio-chemistry, which was his field: he had never claimed a therapeutic value for it, except in casual conversation with a reporter, and then only in the most guarded terms. The idea of trying to make money out of it had never even crossed his mind. And yet, the highest authority in the land compared him to a quack —all but called him one—under circumstances which made it impossible for him to justify himself. But he could retaliate, by making Sir Luke Morwell and Sir Davis Garstin and the rest of them change their tune. Fullamin had a remedial effect, slight but definite, on glands which were

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functioning insufficiently; this was valuable, because no similar agent was known.

Another poignant memory—the casual opening of a tele¬ gram which told him that his father had died suddenly from the bursting of the aneurism. His mixture of feelings when he learned the contents of the will. After providing for old servants and relatives in poor circumstances, leaving five thousand pounds each to Penelope and Elsie, and the practice to Charles Fields, the old gentleman had written:

“The remainder of my estate I bequeath to my son Henry Harding, because I think he has been unfairly treated both by the medical profession and the public in regard to the discovery of the substance named after me/’

His inheritance had placed him beyond money troubles. It included a roomy house in Cadogan Gardens, which had lately been surrendered to his father under a mortgage. Although it was absurdly large for him, he had decided to live in it, so that Penelope and Elsie could stay with him when they came to town.

More confused recollections, of the work of the subse¬ quent six years. The gradual establishment of Fullamin as a remedial agent, especially for glandular derangements, a task in which he had been assisted by other workers, notably certain Frenchmen, who had not only followed up their discovery of the first catalyst by adding others, but hit on the idea of using Fullamin with a retardent when a gland was functioning in excess. He had been quick to see the importance of this in connection with the new field of organo-therapy, and had developed the means of control until, intelligently used in combination with other substances, Fullamin gained its place in therapeutics. Honours had been bestowed on him—degrees, and membership of learned societies. The London medical world had been won, little by little. His surprise when he found that men he had never heard of had a great admiration for him, in spite of the things that had been said. His diffidence at first when he was appealed to by one or another, his gratification at finding that his suggestions were listened to with respect. The pleasure of hearing subse¬ quently that he had hit the right nail. At first, the requests were merely for advice on the facts as they had already been ascertained, but soon it was—“Will you see the patient, and form your own opinion as to the condition? I should value it enormously if you would.” The glory of the day on which he had been called into consultation by Sir William himself, and the inward triumph with which he found himself laying down the law to the great man. The purely professional tributes, as when a leading surgeon accosted him at a reception at the Institute with, “Damn you, Fullar, if you go on performing wonders in the way of reducing enlarged glands, what’s going to become of our branch? Tell me about this new dodge with the pituitary. I have heard something, but I would like to have it from headquarters.” He had described the dodge, disclaiming originality, explaining that the idea had been borrowed from the French. His disclaimer had been met with, “That is all very well, but I foresee the time when there will be a specialist in London in functional disturbances due to derangements of the regulatory secretions, and his initials will be H.H.F. By the way, I have a case of the kind now rather interesting. Can you find time to have a look at the fellow?”