by Robert Reed
the latter sat with the great German smoking a well-earned cigar . “I
shall be able to tell a few things .”
He shook his big head and smiled . The exertion of the last few
weeks did not seem to have told upon him in the slightest .
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1286
“I also have been summoned,” Hubert said . “But you don’t sug-
gest that those fine houses should be destroyed?”
“I don’t suggest anything. I am going to confine myself to facts.
One of your patent medicine advertisements says that electricity is
life . Never was a truer word spoken . What has saved London from a
great scourge? Electricity . What kills this new disease and renders it
powerless? Electricity. And what is the great agent to fight dirt and
filth with whenever it exists in great quantities? Always electricity.
It has not been done before on the ground of expense, and look at the
consequences . In one way and another it will cost London 2,000,000
to settle this matter . It was only a little over a third of that I asked for .
Wait till you hear me talk!”
* * * *
Naturally the greatest interest was taken in the early sittings of
the Commission . A somewhat pompous chairman was prepared to
exploit Label for his own gratification and self-glory. But the big
German would have none of it. From the very first he dominated the
Committee, he would give his evidence in his own way, he would
speak of facts as he found them . And, after all, he was the only man
there who had any practical knowledge of the subject of the inquiry .
“You would destroy the houses?” an interested member asked .
“Nothing of the kind,” Label growled . “Not so much as a single
pig-sty . If you ask me what electricity is I cannot tell you . It is a
force in nature that as yet we don’t understand . Originally it was
employed as a destroyer of sewage, but it was abandoned as too
expensive . You are the richest country in the world, and one of the
most densely populated . Yet you are covering the land with jerry-
built houses, the drainages of which will frequently want looking
to . And your only way of discovering this is when a bad epidemic
breaks out . Everything is too expensive . You will be a jerry-built
people in a jerry-built empire . And your local authorities adopt some
cheap system and then smile at the ratepayers and call for applause .
Electricity will save all danger. It is dear at first, but it is far cheaper
in the long run .”
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1287
“If you will be so good as to get to the point,” the chairman sug-
gested .
Label smiled pityingly . He was like a schoolmaster addressing a
form of little boys .
“The remedy is simple,” he said . “I propose to have a couple of
10,000 volts wires discharging their current into the ground here
and there over the affected area . Inoculation against the trouble is all
very well, but it is not permanent and there is always danger whilst
the source of it remains . I propose to remove the evil . Don’t ask me
what the process is, don’t ask me what wonderful action takes place .
All I know is that some marvellous agency gets to work and that a
huge mound of live disease is rendered safe and innocent as pure
water . And I want these things now, I don’t want long sittings and
reports and discussions . Let me work the cure and you can have all
the talking and sittings you like afterwards .”
Label got his own way, he would have got anything he liked at
that moment . London was quiet and humble and in a mood to be
generous .
* * * *
Label stood over the cutting whence he had procured the original
specimen of all the mischief . He was a little quiet and subdued, but
his eyes shone and his hand was a trifle unsteady. His fingers trem-
bled as he took up a fragment of the blue grey stratum and broke it
up .“Marvellous mystery,” he cried . “We placed the wires in the
earth and that great, silent, powerful servant has done the rest . Un-
derground the current radiates, and, as it radiates, the source of the
disease grows less and less until it ceases to be altogether . Only try
this in the tainted areas of all towns and in a short time disease of all
kinds would cease for ever .”
“You are sure that stuff is wholesome, now?” Hubert asked .
“My future on it,” Label cried . “Wait till we get it under the mi-
croscope. I am absolutely confident that I am correct.”
And he was .
THE DUST OF DEATH, by Fred M. White | 1288
THE COFFIN CURE, by Alan E. Nourse
Originally published in Galaxy, April 1957.
When the discovery was announced, it was Dr . Chauncey Patrick
Coffin who announced it. He had, of course, arranged with uncanny
skill to take most of the credit for himself . If it turned out to be
greater than he had hoped, so much the better . His presentation was
scheduled for the last night of the American College of Clinical
Practitioners’ annual meeting, and Coffin had fully intended it to be
a bombshell .
It was. Its explosion exceeded even Dr. Coffin’s wilder expec-
tations, which took quite a bit of doing . In the end he had waded
through more newspaper reporters than medical doctors as he left
the hall that night . It was a heady evening for Chauncey Patrick
Coffin, M.D.
Certain others were not so delighted with Coffin’s bombshell.
“It’s idiocy!” young Dr . Phillip Dawson wailed in the labora-
tory conference room the next morning . “Blind, screaming idiocy .
You’ve gone out of your mind—that’s all there is to it . Can’t you
see what you’ve done? Aside from selling your colleagues down
the river, that is?” He clenched the reprint of Coffin’s address in his
hand and brandished it like a broadsword . “‘Report on a Vaccine for
the Treatment and Cure of the Common Cold,’ by C. P. Coffin, et al.
That’s what it says— et al. My idea in the first place. Jake and I both
pounding our heads on the wall for eight solid months—and now
you sneak it into publication a full year before we have any business
publishing a word about it .”
“Really, Phillip!” Dr. Chauncey Coffin ran a pudgy hand through
his snowy hair . “How ungrateful! I thought for sure you’d be
THE COFFIN CURE, by Alan E. Nourse | 1289
delighted . An excellent presentation, I must say—terse, succinct,
unequivocal—” he raised his hand—“but generously unequivocal,
you understand . You should have heard the ovation—they nearly
went wild! And the look on Underwood’s face! Worth waiting twen-
ty years for .”
“And the reporters,” snapped Phillip . “Don’t forget the report-
ers .” He whirled on the small dark man sitting quietly in the corner .
“How about that, Jake? Did you see the morning papers? This thief
not only steals our work, he splashes it all over the countryside in
red ink .”
Dr . Jacob Miles coughe
d apologetically . “What Phillip is so
stormed up about is the prematurity of it all,” he said to Coffin.
“After all, we’ve hardly had an acceptable period of clinical trial .”
“Nonsense,” said Coffin, glaring at Phillip. “Underwood and his
men were ready to publish their discovery within another six weeks .
Where would we be then? How much clinical testing do you want?
Phillip, you had the worst cold of your life when you took the vac-
cine . Have you had any since?”
“No, of course not,” said Phillip peevishly .
“Jacob, how about you? Any sniffles?”
“Oh, no . No colds .”
“Well, what about those six hundred students from the Univer-
sity? Did I misread the reports on them?”
“No—98 percent cured of active symptoms within twenty-four
hours . Not a single recurrence . The results were just short of miracu-
lous .” Jake hesitated . “Of course, it’s only been a month .…”
“Month, year, century! Look at them! Six hundred of the world’s
most luxuriant colds, and now not even a sniffle.” The chubby doc-
tor sank down behind the desk, his ruddy face beaming . “Come,
now, gentlemen, be reasonable . Think positively! There’s work to
be done, a great deal of work . They’ll be wanting me in Washing-
ton, I imagine . Press conference in twenty minutes . Drug houses
to consult with . How dare we stand in the path of Progress? We’ve
won the greatest medical triumph of all times—the conquering of
the Common Cold . We’ll go down in history!”
THE COFFIN CURE, by Alan E. Nourse | 1290
And he was perfectly right on one point, at least .
They did go down in history .
The public response to the vaccine was little less than monumen-
tal . Of all the ailments that have tormented mankind through his-
tory none was ever more universal, more tenacious, more uniformly
miserable than the common cold . It was a respecter of no barriers,
boundaries, or classes; ambassadors and chambermaids snuffled
and sneezed in drippy-nosed unanimity . The powers in the Krem-
lin sniffed and blew and wept genuine tears on drafty days, while
senatorial debates on earth-shaking issues paused reverently upon
the unplugging of a nose, the clearing of a rhinorrheic throat . Other
illnesses brought disability, even death in their wake; the common
cold merely brought torment to the millions as it implacably resisted
the most superhuman of efforts to curb it .
Until that chill, rainy November day when the tidings broke to
the world in four-inch banner heads:
COFFIN NAILS LID ON COMMON COLD
———
“No More Coughin’” States Co-Finder of Cure
———
SNIFFLES SNIPED: SINGLE SHOT TO SAVE SNEEZERS
In medical circles it was called the Coffin Multicentric Upper Re-
spiratory Virus-Inhibiting Vaccine; but the papers could never stand
for such high-sounding names, and called it, simply, “The Coffin
Cure .”
Below the banner heads, world-renowned feature writers ex-
pounded in reverent terms the story of the leviathan struggle of Dr .
Chauncey Patrick Coffin ( et al. ) in solving this riddle of the ages:
how, after years of failure, they ultimately succeeded in culturing
the causative agent of the common cold, identifying it not as a single
virus or group of viruses, but as a multicentric virus complex invad-
ing the soft mucous linings of the nose, throat and eyes, capable of
altering its basic molecular structure at any time to resist efforts of
THE COFFIN CURE, by Alan E. Nourse | 1291
the body from within, or the physician from without, to attack and
dispel it; how the hypothesis was set forth by Dr . Phillip Dawson
that the virus could be destroyed only by an antibody which could
“freeze” the virus-complex in one form long enough for normal
body defenses to dispose of the offending invader; the exhausting
search for such a “crippling agent,” and the final crowning success
after injecting untold gallons of cold-virus material into the hides of
a group of co-operative and forbearing dogs (a species which never
suffered from colds, and hence endured the whole business with an
air of affectionate boredom) .
And finally, the testing. First, Coffin himself (who was suffering
a particularly horrendous case of the affliction he sought to cure);
then his assistants Phillip Dawson and Jacob Miles; then a multitude
of students from the University—carefully chosen for the severity
of their symptoms, the longevity of their colds, their tendency to
acquire them on little or no provocation, and their utter inability to
get rid of them with any known medical program .
They were a sorry spectacle, those students filing through the
Coffin laboratory for three days in October: wheezing like steam
shovels, snorting and sneezing and sniffling and blowing, coughing
and squeaking, mute appeals glowing in their blood-shot eyes . The
researchers dispensed the materials—a single shot in the right arm,
a sensitivity control in the left .
With growing delight they then watched as the results came in .
The sneezing stopped; the sniffling ceased. A great silence settled
over the campus, in the classrooms, in the library, in classic halls .
Dr. Coffin’s voice returned (rather to the regret of his fellow work-
ers) and he began bouncing about the laboratory like a small boy at
a fair . Students by the dozen trooped in for checkups with noses dry
and eyes bright .
In a matter of days there was no doubt left that the goal had been
reached .
“But we have to be sure,” Phillip Dawson had cried cautiously .
“This was only a pilot test . We need mass testing now, on an en-
tire community . We should go to the West Coast and run studies
THE COFFIN CURE, by Alan E. Nourse | 1292
there—they have a different breed of cold out there, I hear . We’ll
have to see how long the immunity lasts, make sure there are no
unexpected side effects .…” And, muttering to himself, he fell to
work with pad and pencil, calculating the program to be undertaken
before publication .
But there were rumors . Underwood at Stanford, they said, had al-
ready completed his tests and was preparing a paper for publication
in a matter of months . Surely with such dramatic results on the pilot
tests something could be put into print . It would be tragic to lose the
race for the sake of a little unnecessary caution .…
Peter Dawson was adamant, but he was a voice crying in the
wilderness. Chauncey Patrick Coffin was boss.
Within a week even Coffin was wondering if he had bitten off
just a trifle too much. They had expected that demand for the vac-
cine would be great—but even the grisly memory of the early days
of the Salk vaccine had not prepared them for the mobs of sneezing,
wheezing red-eyed people bombarding them for the first fruits.
Clear-eyed young men from the Government Bureau pushed
through crowds of local townspeople
, lining the streets outside the
Coffin laboratory, standing in pouring rain to raise insistent placards.
Seventeen pharmaceutical houses descended like vultures with
production plans, cost-estimates, colorful graphs demonstrating pro-
posed yield and distribution programs. Coffin was flown to Wash-
ington, where conferences labored far into the night as demands
pounded their doors like a tidal wave .
One laboratory promised the vaccine in ten days; another said a
week. The first actually appeared in three weeks and two days, to
be soaked up in the space of three hours by the thirsty sponge of
cold-weary humanity . Express planes were dispatched to Europe, to
Asia, to Africa with the precious cargo, a million needles pierced a
million hides, and with a huge, convulsive sneeze mankind stepped
forth into a new era .
There were abstainers, of course . There always are .
THE COFFIN CURE, by Alan E. Nourse | 1293
“It doesn’t bake eddy differets how much you talk,” Ellie Daw-
son cried hoarsely, shaking her blonde curls . “I dod’t wadt eddy cold
shots .”
“You’re being totally unreasonable,” Phillip said, glowering at
his wife in annoyance . She wasn’t the sweet young thing he had
married, not this evening . Her eyes were puffy, her nose red and
dripping . “You’ve had this cold for two solid months now, and there
just isn’t any sense to it . It’s making you miserable . You can’t eat,
you can’t breathe, you can’t sleep .”
“I dod’t wadt eddy cold shots,” she repeated stubbornly .
“But why not? Just one little needle, you’d hardly feel it .”
“But I dod’t like deedles!” she cried, bursting into tears . “Why
dod’t you leave be alode? Go take your dasty old deedles ad stick
theb id people that wadt theb .”
“Aw, Ellie—”
“I dod’t care, I dod’t like deedles!” she wailed, burying her face
in his shirt .
He held her close, making comforting little noises . It was no use,
he reflected sadly. Science just wasn’t Ellie’s long suit; she didn’t
know a cold vaccine from a case of smallpox, and no appeal to logic
or common sense could surmount her irrational fear of hypoder-
mics . “All right, nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t
want to,” he said .
“Ad eddyway, thik of the poor tissue badufacturers,” she sniffled,