The Giant in the Meadow, starring Ralph Bellamy on the Cavalcade of America, sponsored by the DuPont Company. Our play on Cavalcade tonight tells the story of the first of all micro-punters. Like many pioneers, Theobald Smith is not so well remembered as the later Titans, whose work he made possible. But men of science the world over do homage to his name, for he carried the rigid discipline of laboratory work out of doors and trapped his adversary in its breeding place, the Fertile Meadows of America, and there established a great new medical principle, a principle that was to make possible the eventual wiping out of yellow fever, malaria, and a score more of mankind's most ancient and mysterious enemies. DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Ralph Bellamy as Theobald Smith, the Giant in the Meadow, on the Cavalcade of America. New York, the year 1884. On the deck of a bright new transatlantic steamship, a solemn young man in student's blazer and white bicycle cuffed trousers stands beside a slender wasp-waisted young lady and the glass of Victorian fashion. They have come off to see off a group of friends on the long, hazardous ocean voyage to Europe. All ashore, it's going ashore. All ashore, it's going ashore. Well, fellas, I guess this is goodbye for the last time. And don't forget, boys, the first dinner engagement when you get back is with us in our new home. Right. I reckon I wouldn't mind too much staying at home, Ted, with a girl like Lillian engaged to be married. Maybe she'll find out before it's too late she picked the wrong fellow. Oh, Ted. Anyway, I'm glad you fellas got your chance. Maybe when you come back you'll teach me some of the things I've missed. Sure. Why do medical students go to Europe to study anyway? Only so we can say we studied in Europe under the masters. That's not true, Coburn. You know it's not. Think of the great men you'll study under. Clark, Pasteur, the giants of the age. They'll come back great doctors, every one of you. Well, I think we'd better go now. We don't want to be stowaway. Goodbye and good luck to all of you. Goodbye, Lillian. Bye, John. Arthur. Hank. Goodbye, fellas. Well, Lillian, there they go. And here I am. Here we are, Ted, and I'm glad. Funny tricks a man's luck plays on him. I get the chance I've dreamed of all my life, a scholarship to study under the great men of medicine in Europe, and a few hundred dollars for steamship fare stands between me and what I might have been. Oh, but think, Ted, what you can do right here. While your classmates are over there peering through microscopes, why, you'll be getting experience where it counts the most and saving human lives at the same time. Lillian, I'm not going to be a doctor. Oh, Ted, you don't mean that. Yes, I do. I learned one lesson in medical school right here at home. Treating individual cases of illnesses all very well, but learning what causes diseases, preventing epidemics before they happen, that's the big thing in medicine. But you need special training for that. But we have to make a living, Ted. Look, Lillian, I'm not asking you to go through with the marriage unless you really want to. I know of a government job where a man can have the use of a laboratory. It doesn't pay much, but it's enough to live on. You're sure that's what you want to do? Don't you see I have to? Oh, then you must, of course, Ted. I don't mind. I don't mind so long as we can be together. You may never be a fashionable doctor's wife or any of the rest of it. But I don't want to be a fashionable doctor's wife, Ted. I only want to be your wife. Oh, Lillian, my darling, you don't know what it means to me to hear you say that. But I've got to tell you the truth. There's only one chance in a million I'll ever find what I'm looking for. You'll find it, Ted. I know you will. Anyway, I'll take that chance in a million with you. Mr. Commissioner, Mr. Salmon is here and the Dr. Smith. Oh, Mr. Salmon, come in, come in. Yes, thank you. I don't believe I have met you, Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith is my new assistant in the Bureau of Animal Industry, Mr. Commissioner. No, the laboratory worker and a student of theoretical medicine. Hmm. Well, I don't know precisely what theoretical medicine has to do with the problem at hand, but I'm glad to have you with us, Dr. Smith. Thank you, sir. Mr. Salmon, in a moment we shall go out here through that door and face a committee of very angry gentlemen. These gentlemen represent the meatpacking industry and the cattlemen of the nation. They want to know what we of the government are doing to solve the problem of Texas cattle fever. They've been doing some research in that field, Mr. Commissioner. Yes, well, that's fine, fine. But I'm afraid research won't impress these gentlemen. They want action. You'll have to promise them something concrete. But what can we promise them, Mr. Commissioner? That we will find the cause of Texas fever and the method for curing it. I have asked three medical consultants to sit in at the meeting. I believe they will present a constructive plan. But Mr. Commissioner, how can they even pretend to have a plan? Nobody knows the cause of Texas fever. But Dr. Smith, these men say they do. Shall we go in? Now follow me if you will, please. Well, Mr. Chairman, I believe we're all here. Shall we proceed? Just a moment, Mr. Chairman. Before we begin, I'd like to ask the Commissioner a straight question. I will answer it to the best of my ability, sir. The question is this, Mr. Commissioner. Is the government going on the assumption that someone is going to discover a cure for Texas fever? Or is it making practical plans for what we'll have to do if no cure is found? Do you realize America's cattle industry may be wiped out in the next few years? That we may have to import all our beef? But that is unthinkable, sir. Why, this is the greatest cattle country in the world. I assure you this crisis is temporary. Great strides have been made. Dr. Billings has conclusive evidence of the cause of Texas fever. Dr. Billings, will you give us a resume of your work? Yes, yes, of course. Well, gentlemen, I will state my findings as briefly as possible. I have examined a number of cattle that have died of Texas fever. And I am convinced the disease is caused by a bacillus present in the feed owing to unsanitary conditions. Dr. Billings, may I ask you a question? I don't believe we've met, sir. I'm Dr. Theobald Smith. As a student of laboratory procedures, I'm interested in knowing what system of controls you set up. I believe I know the bacillus you refer to, and I believe it's present in all animal excretions. In fact, I've fed cultures of it to animals with no harmful results whatsoever. Just a moment, please. I don't believe the purpose of this meeting is to have an academic discussion. Mr. Chairman, speaking for the cattlemen, I might declare, Dr. Smith spoke up just now, all the medical men are just wasting their time. We think we know the cause of Texas fever. We believe it is cause but takes. My dear sir, the very idea that any insect could possibly carry the bacillus of a specific disease, well, it's just too ridiculous a word. Why do you say it's ridiculous, doctor? Have you proved it untrue? Dr. Smith, I'm at a loss to account for your unprofessional remarks. Why, the nearest freshman in medical school knows that insects don't carry diseases. Why, if they did, half the population of the world would be down with some fatal disease. Every mosquito would be a deadly enemy. Dr. Billings, in the first place, half the population of the world is suffering from some virulent disease, yellow fever, malaria, bubonic plague. Perhaps it's no accident that these diseases are peculiar to climates which breed the most insects. I say perhaps. I say the matter is worth investigating. Yes, of course. Dr. Smith, you are at liberty to continue your investigation. But in the meantime, gentlemen, you have our assurance that work is progressing. We hope to be able to offer you concrete evidence of it very soon. How soon, sir? Well, as soon as it is humanly possible to do so. You offer no alternative plan? I cannot offer a plan based on the premise that America has not within it the strength to conquer this problem. I shall keep you informed of our progress, gentlemen. Have a good day. That's the most unsatisfied fact. Oh, sir. Sir. Oh, yes. Yes, Dr. Smith. Could I speak to you a moment? Why, sure. Sure. I wanted to ask you about your idea that ticks carry Texas fever. Well, it's a little more than an idea, doctor. I've watched herds drop off from Texas fever some 30 years now, and it always happens the same way. Always the same way. To begin with, all us cattlemen believe it's the ticks. They come before the trouble. Now you might lose all the grown cows in your herd, but you save most of your calves. Cows, they get light cases, and like us, they'll get well again. You sure of that? Absolutely. But where a cattleman makes his mistake, you see, he'll bring in northern cattle to fill out his herd, and in no time the whole herd will get it again. How do you explain that? Search me, doctor. That's one for you to figure out. Yes. Yes, you're right. That is one for me to figure out. Oh, Ted, you're late. What gets you? Getting my reports in order. I'm resigning my job, Lillian. But what happened? Oh, those fools, those idiots. Oh, now wait a minute. Wait a minute. Well, I know. Sit down in this chair and relax, Dr. G. Now, start at the beginning. Well, they're holding up our appropriation. The story got around that I was breeding ticks in the laboratory, and the halls of Congress are ringing with the shame of it. Oh, but that's the whole basis of your work. Certainly it is. I'll breed some more. If I can prove that Texas fever is carried by an insect, it'll open up a whole new field of medical research. No scientist has ever even considered such a possibility. Yet insects bite people and animals, come into direct contact with the bloodstream, they'd be ideal carriers for certain kinds of microbes. Er, can't you possibly prove your theory without more money? Well, to my own satisfaction, possibly, but I must prove it a dozen times over under strict control. It costs money. And until it's proven that way, it won't be a scientific fact. Then go ahead and prove it to your own satisfaction. After all, you told me yourself, even Pasteur never really proved his theory. But Pasteur is a genius. What exactly is your definition of genius, Dr. Smith? Well, it's intuition, prophecy, the ability to think in terms of the future. Well, my dear? I'm not much of a prophet, but I predict that before this evening is over, you'll talk me into going back to that miserable, poor excuse of a laboratory and tearing up my letter of resignation. And what else do you predict? Crystal is clouded. I see nothing beyond that but hard, hard work. You are listening to Ralph Bellamy as Dr. Theobald Smith in The Giant in the Meadow, an original radio play on the cavalcade of America sponsored by the DuPont Company. Commissioner of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. Situation in this county beyond belief. Five thousand head best prime stock cattle dead on range. One thousand infected Texas fever in pens at shipping centers or after loading. Relish keeping order after rioting against buyers refusing apparently healthy stock in view of epidemic. And as you take immediate steps to remedy that... The USA, year 1890, and up and down the length and breadth of the land on every tongue were two dread words, Texas fever. In laboratories, bewiskered and pompous gentlemen were gravely cutting up the carcasses of dead cows, gravely writing thousands of learned and useless treatises on the alleged cause of Texas fever. And in a dingy attic room in Washington, D.C., Dr. Theobald Smith and his colleagues were working far into the night on the most preposterous theory of all. Gentlemen, this six-legged insect in the bottle I hold in my hand has provided us with the most interesting finding to date. It was brought here alive with the fresh blood still in her of a cow suffering from Texas fever. In this blood, we have found definite evidence of a pear-shaped microbe. If we find this same condition in the blood of this liver taken from a cow which died a thousand miles away from the victim which furnished our other sample, we shall have reason to believe we're on the right track. You have the specimen there, Alexander? Yes, sir, Dr. Smith, and still undi. Good. Just set it down there. And get me a knife. Clean microscope slide. There you is, sir. Kilburn, I want you to watch me carefully. Now then, we shall see what we shall see. What is it, Doctor? I don't know. It's very strange. You'd better have a look, Kilburn. What? Why, it's swarming with... looks like gangrene. Dr. Smith, excuse me, sir, but I meant to mention it to you. That liver didn't smell any too good when I opened the box. Oh, of course. Why didn't we think of that? It's just spoiled. The specimen's absolutely useless. Mr. Sanna. Yes, Dr. Smith. Do you think you could talk loud enough and fast enough to the commissioner to get him to finance another laboratory? He just re-equipped this place for us from top to bottom, Dr. Smith. Yes, I know, but I'm thinking of a different kind of laboratory, a meadow. Two herds of healthy cows and ticks, plenty of ticks. A meadow, Dr. Smith? Yes. And I'd need Alexander and Kilburn here as assistants, and we'd need a few farm hands. It might run into quite a lot of money. Well, I'll tell you the truth, doctor, they're so desperate over at the department for an answer to this problem, I think they'd try anything, even your open-air laboratory in the meadow. North and west out of Washington, a train moves at the leisurely pace of its century. Past the windows of its wooden coaches moves a landscape telling a vast and tragic narrative. Tall fields of Timothy, unharvested, stock barns standing empty in disrepair. And as the land flattens into prairie, the bleached bones of cattle dot the landscape. The warm lifeblood of rural America is ebbing away. The once evening was a gentle lowing of cattle and sweet clover breath. Now is a silent and the lonely whistle of a freight rattling past empty stockpens with empty cars. There are a few places not yet utterly desolated, and it's in one of these that the motley staff of scientists led by Theobald Smith is established. The place looks like any dairy farm, but there are little differences, enough to bring a neighboring farmer across the meadow and leaning over the fence to question the outlander. Meads, my name's Stranger. What's yours? Smith. Ain't no chore to recollect. Say, ain't you sort of optimistic going into cattle raising a hundred percent like this? Well, I'm not exactly a farmer. You see the way I've fenced off this meadow in different sections? Well, I was fixin' to ask you about that. Well, I've got southern cows in one half of the meadow, and divided into age groups, and northern cows in the other half. You brung northern cows down here? Well, you'll have Texas fever for sure, lose your whole herd. That, Mr. Mead, is precisely what I hope will happen. Oh, there boy, go, go. Here's another one of them ticks on it, Dr. Smith. Good. Now, take this bottle of insects over and plant them on the little spotted heifer in enclosure seven, the one we decontaminated yesterday. Well, that, that seem to be kind of mean to the poor little cow, though, Dr. Smith. Yes, I know, but try to make her understand we're doing this so our children and grandchildren will never have to suffer from these culprits, Alexander. Yes, sir. I've been telling that to all of them, Dr. Smith. They looks like they understand. Well, darling, it looks as if this time we really have found the answer. Oh, I do hope so. It seems almost too good to be true. We found the same result under every control I could think of. A pear-shaped microbe in the blood of a deceased cow, pear-shaped microbes in the tick after biting the cow. Pear-shaped microbes appear in the blood of a healthy cow after being bitten by an infected tick. And Texas fever follows. There's only one point in the whole picture that worries me a little, but it's unimportant. Well, wait a minute, Dr. Smith. I brought over the records of those blood counts. Not necessary now, Kilburn. I think we've solved the problem. Well, I don't want to throw cold water on anything, but you'd better look at these. Those cows were all anemic, Dr. Smith. Anemic? Kilburn, anemia. What we thought were microbes, there may be only signs of anemia. Oh, what fools we've been. Well, at least you thought of taking the blood counts. I thought of something else, too, but I put it out of my mind because it spoiled my pat little theory. You remember, Kilburn, that the cows we infected by carrying the insects from one to another all fell ill in a few days while the others took as long as 30 days? Well, the insects take a little longer to crawl there under their own power. Not that long. All the ones we observed lived and die on one cow. We're going to have to experiment all these months of work. Exactly, Kilburn. Well, we've got to start all over again. Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith. Yes, Alexander, what is it? That black heifer you had me put off by herself. She's tuck sick. Her back's all arched up and her eyes is drooling. Oh, it's a pity to see, Dr. Smith. But she couldn't have Texas fever. She couldn't have. Those ticks I put on her were absolutely clean, bred right here in the laboratory. I only put them on to study the anemia. It's that old Texas fever, Dr. for sure. Wait. Kilburn. Yes, Dr. Smith? Kilburn, we've got it. We were right after all. The insects do carry Texas fever. But I thought we proved... We proved conclusively that the ticks don't travel from one animal to another. But they drop off the cow at the moment they die and they leave their eggs in the grass. Then the baby ticks inherit the microbe. So that proves it. Exactly. Which accounts for the time lag. It takes 30 days for the ticks to hatch out and find their way to a healthy cow. Fantastic. But it all picks. And now all we have to do is to make it fit again and again and again until nobody can possibly question our findings. Tired, darling? No. How about you? Suppose you dictate me a note. I'll write it, darling. All right. Got pen, paper? Ready? Well, here we go. Title first. Investigation into the nature, causation, and prevention of Texas or Southern cattle fever. Isn't that rather a conservative title? Well, that's what it's about. This is so important. Now that you've proved that insects do carry disease, a whole new field of medical research is being opened up. And therefore, because I want medical researchers to read my paper, I will make the title describe the contents as accurately as possible. You ready, dear? And so began Theobald Smith's treatise on the lowly cow. But the modest paper titled Investigation into the Nature, Causation, and Prevention of Texas or Southern Cattle Fever opened a broad highway of human knowledge. On that road would walk an army of great scientists. Bruce, finding the deadly secret of sleeping sickness in the titsy-fly. Finley, pioneering research that spelled the doom of the manorial mosquito. Walter Reed, abolishing yellow fever forever from the Western hemisphere. Gorgas, making possible the building of the Panama Canal. The giants of a great new scientific age would pay homage to the man who, on a day in 1893, sat down and modestly dictated to his wife. Investigation into the nature, causation, and prevention of Texas or Southern Cattle Fever. Thank you, Ralph Bellamy. Ladies and gentlemen, in a few moments we will hear again from our star. But first, our story of chemistry. The millions of gallons of paint which have been supplied by DuPont for military purposes since the beginning of this year would be enough to cover in peacetime half a million American homes. Wartime paints are used on everything from planes and tanks to barracks and battleships. Since the finishes used by our armed forces must have special properties, they have been especially formulated. Practically all army, navy, and air force finishes, for example, whether they're for a jeep or the interior of a navy flying boat, must be dull rather than glossy. And the finish that's best for a dive bomber is nothing at all like the paint that is best for the pontoons used for building bridges. If it were a simple matter of taking the bright finishes that make our automobile so attractive in peacetime and making them dull rather than glossy, the manufacture of war paints would be comparatively easy. But wartime paints are drab for particular reasons of their own. They are made drab, the colors you have seen on army trucks and jeeps, so that they'll blend in with the earth colors of the terrain. In other words, they're a first step in camouflage. And camouflage presents problems of its own in this day of airplanes. Camouflage paints must conceal tanks and guns, landing fields, and barracks from observers in the sky. Not only that, but they must conceal them from aerial observers who use telescopic cameras and color filters as well as their eyes. The same DuPont experts who developed quick drying Duco and Dulux finishes are supplying the British and American armed services with new types of quick drying finishes. Even finishes that will resist the action of de-icing fluids used six miles up in the air. Wartime finishes made by DuPont include primer paints for steel runways for aircraft, short bake finishes for mobile equipment, primers for wooden motor truck bodies, waterproof finishes for military maps, stencil finishes, and dozens of others. DuPont not only furnishes paints for these military needs, but DuPont service engineers are aiding manufacturers of wartime equipment to speed up production schedules. Technically trained DuPont field men are at the service of American industry to help solve the painting problems which arise from wartime production. The know-how of these experts has been enlisted for war service. Furnishing the paints that protect America's fighting equipment and furnishing the knowledge for fast, speedy production are the wartime jobs of DuPont paint scientists who bring you in peacetime better things for better living through chemistry. And now ladies and gentlemen, we'd like you to meet our star of the evening, Ralph Bellamy. Theobald Smith saved America's food supply in time of great crisis. Today we must feed our boys in the training camps, ship food abroad to our armed forces, and help our fighting allies. This time you, the American people, can do something about it. One thing you can do right now, today, and every day is to eat victory food. Victory foods are fresh fruits, vegetables, perishable foods which are overabundant and yet cannot be shipped out of the country to our allies. Our government wants us to tell you. Your grocer is now displaying these foods in baskets or counters marked with a V for victory. Look for them. Remember, you're helping victory when you buy victory food. Next week on Cavalcade of America, DuPont will present Charles Lawson in an original radio play called Faucet Without Honor. It is the story of Homer Lee, neglected American whose military genius grew printed 35 years ago, the present warfare in the Pacific. Don't forget next week, Charles Lawson in Faucet Without Honor. The Cavalcade of America expresses its gratitude to Harcourt Brace and Company for permission to base this dramatization on material in their publication, Microbe Hunters, by Paul DeCris. The orchestra and musical score on this program were under the direction of Don Bury. This is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from DuPont. This program came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.
